Ken Salazar's plans for tourism in San Luis Valley generates protests

Two weeks ago, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar surfaced in Alamosa, surrounded by state leaders, to present the results of a federal study aimed at promoting tourism and conservation in the San Luis Valley. The National Park Service's study pushes for conservation easements, recreational trails and landmark designations for many of the area's cultural treasures -- but somebody forgot to check with the locals about some of the nominated sites. As it turns out, not everybody in the crosshairs of the NPS survey is enthused about having historic local structures, including the meeting place of a private religious society, included in tourist brochures promoting the so-called "American Latino Heritage." They question how the selections were made and the seeming rush to tout tourism and development at the risk of other cultural and economic priorities. The most vocal critics of the plan have been Arnold and Maria Valdez, longtime environmental and political activists who run a design and preservation consulting firm in the town of San Luis. Arnold, an heir of the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant and land use planner whose master's thesis deals with Hispanic vernacular architecture in the area, wrote a lengthy letter to NPS assistant regional director Greg Kendrick expressing his concern about how the survey was conducted. He also questioned its emphasis on conservation deals with large landowners -- including owners of the former Taylor Ranch, which was involved in a lengthy legal battle over local access rights. "The broader community is unaware of what is occurring," Valdez writes. "You are dealing with heirs of the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant who have been awarded historical use rights on the property by the Colorado Supreme Court and are preparing their own land use management plan." Valdez is offended that the NPS is considering making a tourist destination of the San Francisco Morada, a kind of penitente chapel, and ran a photo of the interior in its report. The religious society that uses the morada doesn't "under any circumstances permit pictures of the interior to be shown to the public," he notes. (The photo in question has since been removed from the report.)...more