The landscape of the Galisteo Basin hides many places and trails. People who have visited and still visit all these places and trails have numerous stories to tell about them; stories from the many layers of history, which in some cases literally are stacked on top of each other. Archaeologists and landscape architects sometimes talk about a “storied landscape” and of people’s ability to “read the landscape” by identifying a coherent web of landscape features related to the past and present places and trails of people, animals, plants, water, and other resources on the land.

We invite you to share your true stories, tall tales, memories, and other experiences of places, people, and events in the Galisteo watershed. Please send them to info@galisteowatershed.org and we will include them on the website.

If the land could speak, it would tell about how it has seen many people come and go. Was this watershed area perhaps the place of the illustrious seven cities of Cibola that early Spanish Conquistadores were longing for when they traveled thousands of miles through Mexico to this part of the world? This area, so rich in turquoise and gold, so important as a home to thousands of Native people in the late 12 hundreds, so prolific in raising sheep and cattle between 1820 and 1920, and so enchanting as the setting for scattered residences in the late 20^th and early 21^st century.

The Galisteo watershed has been an elusive place as over the many centuries indeed many people came, stayed and eventually left again. It seems that the Galisteo watershed invoked a luring promise to its visitors, tricking them some time later to realize that their dreams were vanishing as a result of their mere presence on the land. Whatever is built, whatever is written, eventually it paradoxically disintegrates, proves incorrect, perishes, and stops to exist… Only stories abound; about places and trails. And the wind.