At 13,161 feet, Wheeler Peak is the highest point in New Mexico — and the rugged country around it is among the most protected ground in the state. The 19,661-acre Wheeler Peak Wilderness, tucked into the Carson National Forest just south of Red River, became the forest's first federally designated wilderness in 1964.
The path to protection began with the Forest Service itself. In 1960 the agency set aside 6,051 acres around the summit as the Wheeler Peak Wild Area. Four years later, the Wilderness Act re-designated it as federal wilderness — one of the first areas in the nation protected under the new law. The Act was championed in the Senate by New Mexico's own Clinton Anderson, who had been talking about wild country with conservationist Aldo Leopold decades earlier.
Congress expanded the wilderness by about 14,700 acres in 1980 through the New Mexico Wilderness Act. In 1996, 764 acres along the ridge between Simpson Peak and Old Mike Peak were transferred to neighboring Taos Pueblo.
The country inside is classic alpine New Mexico. Williams Lake gleams below the summit; cottonwoods and Engelmann spruce climb into bristlecone pine and lichen-painted rocky tundra. Marmots, pikas, and golden eagles live there year-round, elk and mule deer summer in the high meadows, and bighorn sheep — native to the range — were reintroduced in 1993. The wilderness lakes and streams are stocked with cutthroat and rainbow trout every few years.
No roads, no motors, no machines — the Wilderness Act's promise keeps the rooftop of New Mexico much as the Ute hunters and fur trappers found it. From Red River's Main Street, it looms over everything, a wild backdrop to a mountain town.
Look up from almost anywhere in the Red River valley and Wheeler Peak dominates the southern skyline — a snowy sentinel that reminds every visitor why this valley was worth protecting in the first place.
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