Renovations to the historic Aldo Leopold cottage in Tres Piedras are done and it should be available for the public to rent this spring.
“This is a first for
Unlike several neighboring states the Forest Service in
The opening of the Leopold cottage could provide a real
boost to rural northern
“I’m certainly looking forward to it,” says Deb Graves,
owner of the Chile Line Depot restaurant and lodge off U.S. 285 in the
Grave’s restaurant is the only place to stop for food, ice, groceries, lodging and entertainment along the many lonely miles of scenic U.S. 64 between Taos and Tierra Amarilla and remote U.S. 285 between Ojo Caliente and Antonito, Colo.
The Leopold cottage is just across the highway from Grave’s business, set far back from the road behind the post office and tucked up against a rocky hillside.
Leopold, regarded by many as the founding father of the nation’s wilderness and wildlife conservation movement, built the cottage back when he was the Forest Service’s Deputy Forest Supervisor in Tres Piedras in 1911.
The two story cottage features 4 furnished bedrooms and can accommodate up to 8 guests. It has a fully equipped kitchen, dining area, a library and a cozy den with a fireplace.
The cost to spend a night at the historic cottage is $175 and a $250 security deposit is required, Behrens said. Booking dates and other information will be posted at the federal government’s recreational reservation site at www.recreation.gov.
The cottage will be unavailable to rent a couple months out of the year when selected members of The Leopold Writing Program stay there. For more info about the program visit their website at www.leopoldwritingprogram.org.
Those fortunate enough to stay there will find the cottage’s wide, covered front porch offers sweeping views of the surrounding countryside and is perfect for whiling away an afternoon.
Nearby outdoor recreational opportunities including hiking, biking, wildlife viewing while fishing and hunting abound within the Carson National Forest, Cruces Basin Wilderness and the Rio Grande gorge.
A recent midwinter tour of the cottage with Angie Krall, a
District Ranger with the
As Krall described the house, she described the man who designed and built the four-bedroom Craftsman style bungalow with a sunny, warm kitchen, indoor plumbing. hardwood floors and plenty of windows.
“He used its southeast exposure to provide heat and light and the natural rock in the back to provide thermal heat,” she said of Leopold. “He was so far ahead for his time.”
On the front porch visitors will find a bench of Leopold’s design upon which he could sit on backwards to use the back rest as a support for his drawing pad.
“It’s so Aldo,” Krall remarked.
Under the floor of the front porch domestic livestock were kept safe overnight in a spacious manger.
Leopold’s cottage was not only very utilitarian but also likely designed with his wife, Estella’s, comfort in mind.
The master bedroom is on the ground floor, adjacent to the
large front room, behind the fireplace and next to the bathroom. A black and
white, wedding day photo of Aldo and Estella, the daughter of a
The kitchen gets the best light, through both winter and summer. A small kitchen table with a couple of chairs sits under the two south facing windows, making it a naturally warm and inviting space.
A steep wooden staircase to the second floor is placed, craftsman-style, in the direct path of the wide front door. Guests can go directly from the porch through the front door and straight up the stairs to the three large bedrooms.
Dotting the walls of the cottage are other historic photos of Leopold including one in which he is out hunting with a large wooden frame on his back for packing out game.
Craftsman touches throughout the house include the work of others such as beautifully crafted, tongue and groove shelf atop the fireplace produced by fellow ranger, Walt Perry.
“He (Perry) wrote that making it was much more difficult than he had first thought it would be,” Krall said.
Shelves built into the exterior of second floor staircase keep safe more historic items from the past and present.
On one side, an arrangement of old dinnerware including a coffee cup, bowls and a large serving platter in a white glaze with the green stamp of the Forest Service chevron that were made in the USA by Tepco.
On the other side of the staircase, the built-in shelves house Leopold’s publications and writings. There are other books written by many of those who stayed at the cabin over the past 20 years through a writers in residence program operated by The Leopold Writing Program.
Adjacent to the den a large table sits in the middle of the dining room surrounded by numerous chairs while a couple of desks line the walls under spacious windows. It is easy to see why the layout of this room would be so appealing to writers.
Venturing outside to the back of the cottage visitors will find a picnic table under a covered porch. And carved into the nearby rocks is a root cellar where vegetables and other goods would have been stored.
Above it is the dimpled outcropping of New Mexico’s geologic past, a large mound of rocks that leads the way to the future Aldo Leopold Trail, one of many outdoor amenities for the public to enjoy once the cabin becomes available.
Krall, an archaeologist who worked on restoring cabins for rent while stationed with the Forest Service in Colorado is eager to get one of New Mexico’s most famous Forest Service cabins opened to the public.
“It’ll be great that the public will finally be able to use and enjoy this historic structure,” she said.
The cabin is included in the National Register of Historic Places and was recently restored by HistoriCorps volunteers. Much of the preservation and caretaking of the historic cottage has been performed over the years by volunteers.
Krall noted that Leopold spent only a brief period of his life at the cabin, once it was built. He was struck with a sudden illness, barely making it back to the cabin on horseback during a snowstorm. Although he recovered after traveling east, he did not return. He later died from injuries he suffered in a prairie fire, trying to protect his Ohio farm.
His desire to see conservation of the continent’s wild places
become an American value remains his greatest legacy.
Early in his career, Leopold had embraced the then widely accepted game management policy of eliminating predators to protect game animals and domestic livestock. He would later see the error of that management practice and come to urge support of a more holistic approach on federally administered public lands.
“He had such an open mind,” Krall said.
Leopold’s book, “A Sand County Almanac” published in 1949 helped inspire the conservation movement of the 1970s. His essays called for humans to adopt a “land ethic” to serve as the moral compass and an ethical roadmap of how they should and could coexist with nature on Earth. To learn more about Leopold visit www.aldoleopold.org
Once the Forest Service announces that the Leopold cottage is available to rent it can be booked through the www.recreation.gov website.
