Avid hiker Coco Rae shares her extensive knowledge and her love of exploration at one of New Mexico’s greatest treasures in this updated and expanded edition of Hiking Trails in Valles Caldera National Preserve. The first comprehensive trail guide to Valles Caldera National Preserve now includes over seventy color photographs and everything visitors need to know to enjoy this vast caldera, one of the largest in the United States. The guide includes detailed descriptions of over twenty-five trails accompanied by topographical maps, recommendations for mountain bikers, and a history of the preserve. A geological and environmental wonder created over a million years ago, Valles Caldera National Preserve, west of Los Alamos, New Mexico, offers outdoor enthusiasts and nature lovers endless opportunities to discover the natural history of New Mexico through the caldera’s vast mountain meadows, extensive biodiversity, and meandering streams. Hiking Trails in Valles Caldera National Preserve offers first-time and returning visitors a complete guide to the recreation and beauty found in this unique landscape.

The vital history of New Mexico and Arizona during the formative years between the American Occupation and the coming of the railroad has been compressed by the author into one volume with hundreds of footnotes and many profiles that make this book of vital importance to teachers, students, and researchers. The book is broken into four parts: “General Kearny Comes to Santa Fe,” “The Confederates Invade New Mexico,” “Carleton’s California Column,” and “The Long Walk.” Many famous men walk and talk through these pages, including Kearny, Doniphan, Baylor, Canby, Carleton, Sibley, and a host of others. In addition, the story of the impact of the Civil War in New Mexico on the Indians, and the tragic results, is told here in detail for the first time. Long out of print, the book is available once again with a new foreword by Marc Simmons and preface by Michael L. Keleher, William A. Keleher’s son. It also includes brief biographies of Ernest L. Blumenschein and Oscar E. Berninghaus who provided the original illustrations. WILLIAM A. KELEHER (1886–1972) observed first hand the changing circumstances of people and places of New Mexico. Born in Lawrence, Kansas, he arrived in Albuquerque two years later, with his parents and two older brothers. The older brothers died of diphtheria within a few weeks of their arrival. As an adult, Keleher worked for more than four years as a Morse operator, and later as a reporter on New Mexico newspapers. Bidding a reluctant farewell to newspaper work, Keleher studied law at Washington & Lee University and started practicing law in 1915. He was recognized as a successful attorney, being honored by the New Mexico State Bar as one of the outstanding Attorneys of the Twentieth Century. One quickly observes from his writings, and writings about him, that he lived a fruitful and exemplary life. His knowledge and understanding of humankind is evidenced by this quote attributed to Sir Thomas Browne, 1686, and printed after the title page in “Turmoil in New Mexico”: “The iniquity of oblivion scattereth her poppy and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit and perpetuity...who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable men forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time.”