Mills Canyon Volunteer Service Project

"Mills Canyon Volunteer Service Project:
DATE: April 30 – May 2, 2010

THE PLACE: Mills Canyon, named after the famous lawyer Melvyn Mills. He represented the infamous Maxwell Land Grant, one of the largest private landholdings in the history of the United States.

Note: Melvin Mills had a fruit and vegetable empire in the canyon called the Mills Canyon Enterprise. It was ten miles long and was crisscrossed by irrigation channels and cisterns that fed hundreds of acres of fruit orchards and vegetable gardens. Mills planted 14,000 apple, peach, pear, cherry, plum, walnut, almond, and chestnut trees. He also cultivated melons, tomatoes, grapes, and cabbages. He was wiped out by a flood in 1904.

Mills Canyon is one of the more spectacular parts of our state. The canyon itself is wilder today than it was one hundred years ago. It drops from the wild and open Eastern Plains and is a product of the Canadian River, which carves its way south from its headwaters on Ted Turner’s Vermejo Park Ranch on the ColoradoNew Mexico border. The remote canyon is rich in grass and red rock cliffs, and here one can find bear, wild turkey, golden and bald eagles, and, of course, the beautiful mountain lion.

THE PROJECT: Steve West, NMWA staff scientist, will be leading us, and we will be doing a wildlife survey. We will train Saturday morning at breakfast. We will then disperse up and down the canyon for the day. Saturday night at dinner we will compile our information over enchiladas.
MEALS: Breakfast Saturday morning. Dutch oven dinner Saturday night.
MAXIMUM PARTICIPANTS: 20
PROJECT LEADER: Steve West
CONTACT: Go to nmwild.org and click on ‘Events’; there is a $10.00 administrative fee due at registration.
DRIVING DISTANCE: Approximately 1½ hours northwest of Las Vegas, New Mexico"

(Via New Mexico Wilderness Alliance» — New Mexico Wilderness Alliance ».)