Two New Mexico pueblos got bigger last week in transactions that will benefit many New Mexicans.
On Friday, Isleta Gov. E. Paul Torres and U.S. Secretary of
the Interior Sally Jewell signed papers transferring nearly 90,000
acres, known as the Comanche Ranch, into trust for the pueblo.
The pueblo had purchased the property west of Belen in 1997
for $7.3 million and began the process of applying to make it an
official, permanent part of the pueblo.
...Meanwhile in Santa Fe on Wednesday, state Land Commissioner
Aubrey Dunn announced that the old Dixon Apple Orchard and 8,800 acres
of adjacent state trust land in northern New Mexico will be traded to
Cochiti Pueblo. The pueblo has been seeking to regain the properties for
decades because they contain ancestral village sites and hunting areas.
In exchange, the Land Office will get the two-acre Garrett’s
Desert Inn site in downtown Santa Fe, near Land Office headquarters on
Old Santa Fe Trail.
Here’s how this deal works: The Catron family of Santa Fe is
selling the Garrett’s site to Cochiti, which will trade it to the
state.
Dunn said the state will make eight times more income from
the downtown Santa Fe site than it has been getting from the orchard and
the trust land, which were spoiled by devastating fires and flooding in
2011.
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