I used to occasionally use the road over the Gray Ranch (now called the Diamond A, after the name used by William Randolph Hearst while he owned it) to get to the area of Cloverdale and the Coronado National Forest, the latter partly in Arizona (See: lower right hand part of map on gacc.nifc.gov/...). I was collecting arthropods for the Arthropod Museum at my university and doing research on the manual several of us were writing on the grasshoppers of New Mexico. I knew that several mostly Mexican species could be found here at the Bootheel of the state. However, the Gray Ranch intrigued me to the extent that I looked at the KEEP OUT signs along the road with dismay, realizing that I might never investigate the obviously fascinating “Spirit” Mountains to the east of the road.
It is true that often such interests finally do bear fruit and I found myself years later in touch with the people from the Nature Conservancy, which had purchased the huge ranch (321,000 acres) and I was granted access to it in 1991. I continued to have access for around nine years and did the best I could to visit it as often as possible, sometimes on weekends with my wife and a friend and his wife. It was as fascinating an area as I had thought years before. Our daughters went on one visit, along with several researchers and me as we worked out a plan to digitize photos and data and produce a web site on the area’s biota. That, unfortunately, never came to fruition, as the powers that were at the time ruled that biodiversity research was passé! (I never figured that one out because the idea was endorsed, not only by our then Distinguished Visiting Professor, but by one of the authors of The Changing Mile (See: books.google.com/...) , who just happened to be at ranch headquarters by accident at the time (we had no knowledge of his presence there! But we certainly tried to take advantage of his opinion and expertise, which fell on deaf ears.) For a while I continued to bombard the office of the official involved with biodiversity studies, which were coming out often in such prestigious journals as Science and Nature, but to no avail. Finally I gave up. You cannot convince a man who is certain of his opinion with even a mountain of data!!
My first trip to the Gray Ranch was with a group of other researchers and we were given access to an outlying camp building for our headquarters. We set up various insect traps and I also collected insects that came to the lights and took beating and sweep samples from the vegetation. We lived in the camp at Upshaw for several days and journeyed out to the Animas Mountains and over San Luis Pass to the east and Clanton Draw to the west. The area was beautiful grasslands, with creek bed and riparian forest along the water flow. To the east the area included an ancient Pleistocene lakebed, fossil sand dunes, juniper-oak woodland, merging into forest-covered canyons of the Animas range.
Me, during a dry winter in the fossil sand dunes south of an old Pleistocene Lakebed, Gray Ranch, New Mexico.
A very rough ranch road took us to Black Bill Canyon, possibly named after Curly Bill Brocius, the mysterious gunfighter and associate of the Clanton Gang, who may have died by the gun of Wyatt Earp (at least if we believe Wyatt’s account!) Curly Bill also sold part of the ranch to the Grays, possibly after having killed the previous squatter. He and his associated band of cutthroat rustlers apparently spent some time in Cloverdale (when they were not in Galeyville, their robber’s roost in Arizona) , which now consists of one building. The land was steeped in Old West lore as the Clantons, Johnny Ringo, and other outlaws held sway during the 1880s, along with Geronimo and other tribal leaders of the Chiricahua Apaches.
One of the many species of vascular plants on the Gray Ranch.
Of course we were more interested in the biology of the area. One of my associated found that one of the most common of the local mosquitoes was the Malaria vector Anopheles freeborni. Meanwhile I discovered several species of Army Ants, with the sausage flies (male Army Ants) of the genus Neivamyrmex being common at lights at night. The birds were also interesting, including Lark Sparrows and Scaled Quail. Another one of my associates (from Texas) collected scorpions and we found ample representatives, including dozens of Arizona Bark Scorpions on the rocks at night at Geronimo Pass in the nearby Piloncillo Mountains. I mentioned these in an earlier diary.
Black Bill Canyon, Animas Mountains, New Mexico.
From 1991, when we spent the time headquartered at Upshaw camp, I visited the area with other researchers and by myself for probably at least ten more trips. I never got bored! My discoveries included a Great Horned Owl in the juniper-oak area, as well as Slave-making Ants (Polyergus sp.) and a tree-dwelling jumping spider (Phidippus sp.) in the juniper-oaks and a couple of species of ground-dwelling jumping spiders in the genus Habronattus from the slopes of the Animas near San Luis Pass. On my solitary trips I would hike into the west side of the Animas and sweep bushes and annual plants, while beating trees. I was sometimes in the Animas totally alone, but I then did not have much to fear. In later trips I occasionally heard the drone of an unmarked light airplane skirting the mountains and I wondered what they were doing, but never knew for sure. San Luis Pass area, just south of where I was, was close to Sonora. Soon the drug war erupted along the border (2006) and it became somewhat unsafe anyway even earlier, so I did not push access after about 2000.
Cienega, near Nature Conservancy Headquarters, Gray Ranch, New Mexico.
On one trip to Black Bill Canyon with an associate, we hiked as far up the canyon as we could, in the process finding Black Bear scat, full of fruit from the Skunkbush Sumac, which apparently gave the bear diarrhea! On another trip with other associates, we came across a small Javelina heard as we drove down the access road. At various times different groups of us came across a Bull Snake and a Prairie Rattlesnake. The latter climbed in the wheel well of our state vehicle and had to be spun out by driving fast down the road and stopping suddenly. I saw a Golden Eagle flying near the Animas once and at one time accidently trapped two Desert Shrews in pitfalls, embarrassingly because Nature Conservancy employees were with me at the time and thought these might be the endangered Arizona Shrew. The traps were set in the fossil dunes and were meant for arthropods.
West of the mouth of Black Bill Canyon was a bajada (slope) with numerous Agaves. On these prickly plants we found the jumping spider Paraphidippus basalis and a weevil that seemed to mimic their movements. Collecting either one of them was another matter, as you could quickly cut up your hands on the leaf edges, which had saw-like teeth!
Looking west from the mouth of Black Bill Canyon, Animas Mountains, New Mexico.
Black Bill Canyon was next to another, apparently unnamed canyon and there several of us found strange webs one winter. Curious about their origin we went back in summer and discovered that the webs were made by the comb-footed spider Enoplognatha ovata, which had apparently been feeding heavily on true Daddy-Long-Legs (Order Opiliones), as their legs were numerous in the webs. There was also a cleptoparasitic comb-foot, Neospintharus baboquivari, living in the webs. In a web of the huge orb-weaver, Araneus illudatus (Araneidae), I found another cleptoparasitic species of comb-footed spider, the Dew Drop Spider, Argyrodes pluto.
I treasure my time spent in this fabulous place, to a field biologist a “Little Bit of Heaven” and shudder to think what the Border Wall has done to it, but looking at a recent map of the completed section, it looks like it has not been finished there. The Gray Ranch was listed as one of the Last Great Places by the Nature Conservancy, and they were right!
See: www.latimes.com/… for the story of the Gray and its history with the Nature Conservancy and the rancher’s consortium that bought it.
Animas Mountains, Gray Ranch, New Mexico.
