Comanche National Grassland - History

History

The marks of ancient American Indians are found in the Grassland in petroglyphs on many of the rocks and cliff faces in the canyons. Some of the rock art may be as old as 8,000 years and some are so new that they depict horses which arrived in the Southwest with the Spanish in the 16th century. The early Indians lived in rock shelters, some of which have been found in the Grassland, and practiced a hunting and gathering culture. Around 1000 A.D., a people called the Apishipa began farming in the region, however their efforts were unsuccessful. Apache inhabited this area when the Spaniards arrived. They were pushed southward by the Comanche in the 18th century. Tipi rings – stones holding down the edges of circular tipis – are common.

A branch of the Santa Fe Trail ran through the Timpas unit and from the 1820s onward wagon trains from Missouri and Kansas loaded with goods for New Mexico followed the trail. Among the first non-Indian settlers on the Grassland was a group of eleven New Mexican families who settled along the Purgatory River in 1871. In the same year, Eugene and Mary Rourke established a ranch nearby. Homesteaders soon followed the ranchers and much of the grassland was devoted to growing Broomcorn. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s defeated the farmers and the Federal government bought the land comprising the present National Grassland from its bankrupt owners. Comanche National Grassland was established in 1960. Grazing permits for cattle are issued by the Forest Service to ranchers for most lands belonging to the National Grassland.

An important addition occurred in 1991 when the U.S. Army transferred 16,000 acres (6,500 ha) of land in the Purgatoire River Canyon to the National Grassland. The Army lands were part of the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site (PCMS), a 238,000-acre (96,000 ha) facility devoted to military exercises. However, In 2007, the Army announced a plan to expand the PCMS by purchasing additional land and seeking to transfer the lands of the Comanche National Grassland to Army ownership. The expansion plan, to be implemented in several phases, would increase the size of the PCMS to several millon acres, making it the largest military base in the United States. If implemented, the plan would virtually eliminate private land ownership and ranching in Southeastern Colorado as well as abolish the National Grassland and displace 17,000 people. Local citizens and politicians protested the expansion plan of PCMS. The U.S. Congress banned funds for the expansion each year from 2007 to 2010.