Santa Fe River
The Waterfall on East Alameda St.
Santa Fe River
For its fundamental contributions to life in Santa Fe, through many centuries, the Santa Fe River gets very little public respect. It trickles through town, in a bed cut deep beneath street level, isolated there from what used to be its floodplain. Given a long history of mismanagement and dueling interests in the river, we should duly appreciate that it does at least trickle – most of the time. For it was not always thus. But from my residence just across east Alameda Street, the beauty along the riverwalk is far too fine a blessing to disregard or take for granted.
Through the living room window, giant cottonwoods preside on the bank, just past the stone picnic tables above the waterfall, now blazing golden for Thanksgiving. It’s obvious from here that greenspace along the river vitally affects the atmosphere we breathe, see, and feel around here. Yet as I turn my attention in earnest to it, this little vicinity is virtually all I know of the river, and I don’t know very much about it. However, I feel as though I owe the river the respect of learning something about its essential role in the local history, geography, and culture. This is for the sake of a better perspective on our community and its changing relationship to the river across four centuries. I also celebrate the river, such as it is, as my close neighbor and source of daily energy infusion.
In 2007, longstanding mismanagement of the river led the naturalist group American Rivers to declare the Santa Fe River the most endangered river in America. As I begin, I wonder, how much has it rebounded from that abysmal low? In view of the city’s goal of maintaining a living river, the question is tantamount to asking - how alive is the Santa Fe River after more than four hundred years of coursing through and serving the capital city? I can’t conclusively answer this question, but I feel compelled to address it as best I can.
To this end, I’ve read the fairly rich online materials from the City of Santa Fe, Santa Fe Watershed Association, Nature Conservancy, and barrios, communities, and associations along the river. A very fine 2010 doctoral dissertation in geography by Tara Plewa has been particularly helpful in terms of fluvial geomorphology and some historical detail. I’ve done my best to give a layperson’s version of these here. I’ve also spoken casually with several knowledgeable individuals and reconnoitered by car and on foot as much of the river as is readily accessible.
The river extends forty-six miles down from a pool near the top of Santa Fe Canyon, through the city, to the Traditional Historic Community of Agua Fria; then, past the airport and La Cienega, and down rugged La Bajada Canyon, into the Rio Grande at Cochiti Reservoir. In its upper reaches, down the steep canyon toward Upper Canyon Road, the river is a clean mountain stream running down a wetland fold in the mountains; in its urban trajectory through the city, a crucial municipal resource and greenspace amenity, yet subject to channel degradation and stormwater pollution from runoff of city pavement; in its downstream course, it’s a string of pools and springs, linked by stretches of brushy dry bed, recovering from massive erosive effects of large-scale sand and gravel mining.
Watershed Preserve near Old Stone Dam
The river now bears little resemblance to its natural state. Mismanagement has been the general rule across four centuries of historic occupation of the watershed (which encompasses virtually all of Santa Fe). But some strides have been made toward rehabilitating the living river, and there is ample community-spirited commitment to continue.
It may once have been a perennial stream, or nearly so, no one is certain, but it has been only intermittent throughout historic times. Nowadays, the channel beyond downtown as far as the Wastewater Treatment Plant above La Cienega sees water flowing only after heavy rains. From there, the treatment plant releases effluent into the stretch of river running through La Bajada Canyon to the reservoir, which makes the final stretch perennial.
Road signs along the river’s course, along Alameda Street, Agua Fria Road, Paseo Real, remind you that you’re driving on the ancient El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro (The Spanish Royal Inland Road), which followed prehistoric trading routes from Mexico City to San Gabriel, on the Rio Grande above Santa Fe, where the Spaniards first permanently settled in 1598. That expedition, led by Juan de Onate, followed the trail up the river from Cochiti Pueblo, arduously up through La Bajada Canyon, then across the plateau toward the Sangre de Cristos. Pools and springs roughly a day’s journey apart became parajes, overnight stops for parched teams and travelers, finally nearing the capital after six months of wagon travel across rugged desert.
Access to the rim of La Bajada Canyon from the Santa Fe plateau is restricted, but on the winter’s day I go down there I find the gate open and go through. I’m rewarded with the sight of the grand sweep of the river coming out of the canyon onto the plain of Cochiti below. The panorama serves as a suitably majestic transition from the Rio Arriba to Rio Abajo provinces, as designated by the Spaniards.
Although the canyon and plain below appear like some of the loneliest country imaginable, the crisp air feels charged with natural spirit and historical significance. The place was such a crucial, arduous passage for all journeying north to Santa Fe. There is no sign of remembrance of this at the top of the canyon, and that seems perfectly fitting to me. The trail just ends on a steep, rocky slope. We who have a care for this can find our way out here for a breath of air and moment of commemoration of the effort, triumphs, broken axles, and lives lost and found coming up this lonesome canyon. It’s a grand vista and charged moment for me.
La Bajada Canyon, from Cochiti
A fracture in the river’s channel bed above La Bajada causes the aquifer to rise in a spring to the surface, creating a large pool at La Cienega, the last paraje before Santa Fe. The spring and pool remain today, adjacent to Rancho de las Golondrinas, held as the Leonora Curtin Wetland Preserve. How welcome a sight it must have been to bone-weary desert travelers.
Midway on that final leg into Santa Fe, the Spaniards came upon a burnt pueblo, which they called, quite literally, Pueblo Quemado (burnt pueblo). They named their own ranchito on the same spot Agua Fria, as it’s still known today, for the brisk river water, though that stretch seldom sees water now. Agua Fria is proud of its humble agricultural roots and is designated a THC (Traditional Historic Community). But a great quantity of sand and gravel was mined from the channel here with highly destructive effects, and harbingers of gentrification loom and threaten the traditional community as Santa Fe encroaches. But very deeply rooted Hispano culture proudly prevails, as it does also in other places all along the river.
The Peralta expedition that founded Santa Fe in 1610 settled over the ruins of another abandoned pueblo. That place by the river, surrounded with abundant forest, game, and fish, was propitious for the new royal capital they had come to establish. They dug acequias branching from the river even before they built houses or a government palace, as the laws of the Indies instructed.
The Tlaxcalan Indians who supported the Spanish expeditions northward settled south of the river, calling their settlement Analco, in remembrance of their Aztec past. San Miguel Church, the oldest in the United States, was built on that side of the river to serve them. The barrio of Analco today remains proud of those roots and of its centuries of community cohesion since that rough beginning over 400 years ago. Adhering to the Law of Indies’ embargo on their living with Indians, the Spaniards settled on the ruins of the old pueblo on the north side of the river.
Colors of Barrio de Analco
The water supply was fickle, highly prone to drought and flood. Fields would dry up from too little, then wash away with too much. Surface water in town, from a large Cienega and a tributary of the Santa Fe River called the Rio Chiquito, furnished a back-up supply. Acequia companies used whatever flow they could get to irrigate their fields. Domestic supplies for the city, then as now, also came from the river. Municipal versus agricultural uses would become an increasingly fraught question as the city grew, with municipal uses virtually always winning, at least until late in the game. Acequias have sacrificed greatly for Santa Fe’s ambitions to grow.
Two related events from the city’s early days underscore its sensitivity to water supply from the river. At the crux of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, the natives finally drove the Spaniards from Santa Fe by cutting off an acequia supplying the palace with water from the river. The Spaniards then returned the favor in 1693 when they sealed their reconquest by cutting off supply from the same acequia to the Pueblos in the palace. They were out of business and out of luck without the water from the river.
Periodically, terrible floods would burst down the canyon and barrel through town, heavily laden with downed timber, debris, and sediment, put into play by both human activity and natural processes in the canyon. Devastation and need to rebuild were chronic.
In 1881, Old Stone Dam became the first of four dams to be built in the canyon. It was small and caused relatively little disturbance of the natural watershed downstream. It was also too small to serve the needs of the growing community for long. The company out of Chicago that built the dam had secured from the Santa Fe County Commissioners the right to impound and store the water of the Santa Fe River. But, against great objection from the acequia companies, they claimed ownership of the water as well. This was a seismic shift, from public to private ownership. Until then water had been purely a public good, available to all agricultural users with a need. Henceforth you would not receive water until you paid the company for the privilege.
The Anglo business community and Santa Fe New Mexican strongly supported the company, as they would also the company’s successors, until the court finally adjudicated the longstanding matter in 1994. The court upheld the principle of “first in time, first in right” and held that the company (which had been acquired by Public Service of New Mexico in 1946) may have the right to impound and store the water, but it does not own it.
By that time, however, water had been denied to the acequias so long that there was little agriculture remaining in Santa Fe. Only three acequia companies remained of the more than thirty that had drawn water, and the acreage covered was a small fraction of what it had been. Over the many years with no water, most parciantes under the acequias had conceded their rights to the city’s ever-growing need for domestic supply.
They could hardly do otherwise. The capital was going to be a center of government and culture, as well as a tourist attraction, not a farm town. It made a calling card of brown stucco, emulating traditional adobe, and put forth art, intellectual pursuits and pretensions, a tremendously rich cultural mosaic, and a deep and authentically romantic backstory to attract its own kind and mint tourist dollars. This succeeded, I’m here to tell you, and the acequias, fields, and groundwater have all but dried up. Such have been the trade-offs for long, steady urban growth. The Acequia Madre (operating since 1610 at least), the Acequia del Cerro Gordo, and the Acequia Muralla continue to take their allotted shares of water from the river. All the others are long gone.
The Old Stone Dam filled completely with sediment, downed timber, and debris, and failed in the great flood of 1894. A second, larger dam, the Two Mile Dam (named for its distance from the plaza) was finished just below the Old Stone Dam that same year. The new, larger dam proved its worth when it spared the city what could have been an awful disaster in another great flood in 1904.
The Old Stone again filled with sediment and failed in that flood, but the Two Mile Dam held. Although it fulfilled its defensive function, changes in the channel and watershed, such as incision, erosion, and shrinking of the aquifer, also quickly followed its construction. Such deterioration of the channel may have been less observable and of less public concern than the stout defense against flooding, but it would take a heavy long-term toll on the river.
Centuries of logging and grazing in the canyon created the debris hazard that ruined the Old Stone Dam, and restrictions were increasingly imposed on use of the upper canyon, until in 1932 it was closed to human activity by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Water Company, in response, built McClure Dam (then known as Granite Point). Then, in response to the burgeoning needs of Los Alamos, the largest dam yet, Nichols Dam was added in 1943. PNM purchased the properties of the Water Company in 1946 and held them until the City of Santa Fe acquired them in 1994. The acequias received little, if any, water through all of this.
Restricting human activity from the upper canyon helped with the sediment and debris problem, but it created others. No management doesn’t mean good management. Sickly, skinny trees grew too thickly to penetrate, too thickly for much snow to percolate into the aquifer; it would evaporate from treetops before it could. They also grew into a terrible fire hazard. Yet for decades the upper canyon was closed, without real management oversight.
Though still closed, a situation some believe should now change to allow access, several stakeholders now have a share of oversight of processes in the canyon. These include the Santa Fe Watershed Association, the Nature Conservancy, the Forest Service, and Santa Fe City and County. So far, it appears that too much oversight is better than none, but it’s less than ideal when perceptions, interpretations, and intentions differ from one party to another. Even so, all in their way are pursuing the ideal of a living river.
For decades, the company that owned the dams upstream (originally firms out of Chicago and New York, then from 1946 to 1994, PNM), considered that they owned the water they impounded and refused to release it until it was purchased. That disastrously selfish policy not only denied the rights of local acequia companies, but also caused Santa Fe’s crucial groundwater table to drop substantially. Major groundwater resources, such as the Rio Chiquito and the Cienega near the edge of the plaza, which had for centuries been prominent features of city life, petered out and dried up for good. Nowadays, it's hard to imagine the city having such surface water downtown, but so it was, for a very long time.
The aquifer is Santa Fe’s drought insurance. The Rio Chiquito arose in the legendary Bishop’s Garden behind the Loretto Convent and ran down Water Street into the river near the Guadalupe Street Bridge. That beautiful garden has reincarnated into the distinctly less beautiful diocesan parking lot. (They literally did, per Joni Mitchell, pave paradise to put up a parking lot.)
Finally, in 2011, the city, which had purchased PNM’s interest in the upstream dams, agreed to release an amount of water commensurate with the year’s precipitation into the river channel. This redressed the egregious, longstanding abuse of denying it water. The sites of the long-lost surface water resources are now indistinct parts of the cityscape. You would never suspect from seeing the buildings and pavement what that area had featured in the past.
In these ways and others, the river has been mismanaged, often unintentionally, in the interest of the city’s growth and prosperity. The deep incision all along the channel results from attempting to confine it narrowly with stone and cement placements on the banks. This forces powerful, narrow, erosive flows down the channel, full of stormwater-polluted runoff. Natural seepage from floodplain into acquifer does not much occur. Stormwater runoff flows openly into the few remaining acequias, polluting the fields they water.
Besides cutting the river off from its own floodplain, incision has also favored drought-tolerant, flood-intolerant invasive species, such as Russian olives and Siberian elms, over native cottonwoods and willows, which sicken and die for loss of groundwater. Quick, forceful flows down the narrow channel deny recharge to the aquifer. Working to address these problems, a non-profit start-up, Friends of the Santa Fe River, strives with grassroots support and a little help from the city to eliminate invasive species growing along the river and replace them with natives. They have made good strides on the well-groomed east side of town. And we can thank them also for the grooming.
On the other hand, confinement of the river through incision has enabled developers to build much closer to the river than would be possible if the floodplain were still active. I hadn’t imagined since moving here that I was living in the floodplain, so remote seem the chances now of being flooded; but without the incision I definitely would be. From the city’s point of view, and, practically speaking, from mine too, that’s the bright side of the big incision. The river gives up its braiding or meandering opportunities to high-end city growth; it just goes down, low below ground, instead of across, as the city builds up close to it and prospers.
I began this study with some hope and intention of saying how far the river has rebounded since 2007; but at the end I find no such extravagant conclusion warranted. However, through auspices of a number of agencies, both governmental and non-profit, significant progress toward rehabilitation has been achieved. Water now flows, or at least trickles, in the river, except during extreme drought. That in itself is a very big improvement. Native willows and cottonwoods have been planted, with mixed success, in badly eroded parts of the channel. The Watershed Preserve in the restricted upper canyon has created a rich wetland environment favorable to wildlife and aquifer recharge. In town, the city is installing rain gardens wherever possible to capture storm runoff and let it soak into the aquifer before it pollutes the river and acequias.
The city has also created miles of broad, attractive walkways along the banks of the river. But as nice as these are for walkers and neighborhoods, the attraction is usually more the walkway per se than it is the beauty of the river, which is badly incised, eroded, and formless along much of the trail. Friends of the Santa Fe River has addressed the important invasive versus native species issue and keeps the eastside stretch of the river as clean and welcoming as it can be.
The river itself will never get back to anything like its natural state. Even so, it continues to serve the city largely in fundamental ways, as it has for so long. It provides forty percent of the city’s water supply, feeds the three remaining acequias, and provides a needed green space and breath of air all the way through Santa Fe and beyond. The river has given up its wild nature for the sake of the city’s growth. It has survived centuries of rough treatment to keep on serving, and it deserves its fair share of appreciation and respect.
