A Sad Legacy, part 3

This is what Chicosa Lake looks like today. It dried up due to excessive drawdown of the water table. The drying of the lake caused the closure of the state park

While I was walking around the abandoned campground, I noticed alot of dried up cowpies all over the place. I even saw them on the front porch of the bathroom/shower building! Which means cows have grazed this former state park, at least periodically, since the park's closure. One of the most famous cattle trails, the Goodnight-Loving Trail (this name has drawn alot of snickers and innuendos for over a 100 years, but it was named after Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving, two of the most famous cattlemen of the 19th century), came right through this area. When the park was open, there was a museum dedicated to the history of cattle ranching and cattle drives that made the American West famous. It had displays of different cattle brands, barbed-wire fencing displays, displays of various items, such as cooking utensils, that were used on cattle drives and alot of historical photographs. It also had historical displays that pertained to the nearby Santa Fe Trail.
While I was standing at one of the dilapidated picnic ramadas, I saw a small grove of trees to the south and a barely discernible building behind them. Behind this building is an abandoned house, undoubtedly a ranger residence from the days when this was a state park. The larger building was once the museum, now sitting forlornly on the windswept prairie. I am assuming the artifacts that were once contained in this museum have been sent to either the state history museum in Santa Fe, or have been distributed among various museums around the state.
I don't know if there was another campground in the park, I didn't see any evidence of one. I am under the impression that this was the only campground. If so, that means there were only 20 campsites in the park, which isn't very many. However, this is not a heavily visited area by tourists, so 20 campsites may have been adequate.
What is left of Chicosa Lake is an analogy for streams and lakes all over the country. It used to be a reliable source of water on the Goodnight-Loving Trail, but now has been reduced to nothing more than a dried up, cracked mud, depression in the ground. This has been brought about by excessive drawdown of the water table over the decades. Lakes, creeks and rivers have been rendered dry, or at the very least, intermittent, because of human manipulation of the natural process. This is not confined to the United States, but it is happening all over the world.

A Sad Legacy, part 2

This is the former bathroom/shower building at the abandoned state park

When I was in Harding County's largest town, Roy, I decided to drive north out of town on State Highway 120 to see if I could find what happened to the former Chicosa Lake State Park. After the highway leaves town, it travels 4 miles north and then it makes a hard, 90 degree turn and heads in an easterly direction. Finally, when I was 6 miles outside of Roy, I saw a dirt road coming in from the left. The street sign said "Chicosa Lake Road." So I turned onto this road. After about a third of mile, I started seeing covered picnic shelters, the kind that would typically be found in campsites. I made a left turn onto another dirt road and, after crossing a cattle guard, I entered the boundary of the former state park. However, I did not see any type of sign announcing that the park is now a county park or privately owned. I soon realized that I had just entered an abandoned state park! Chicosa Lake State Park is completely and utterly abandoned! This is the first time that I ever saw an abandoned state park!
I counted 20 picnic shelters. Most of them are still in good shape, but I noticed that that roof, or canopy, on 3 of them are beginning to cave in. All of these picnic shelters are lined up in a straight line next to the fence that once marked the east boundary of the state park. All road access to these former campsites is overgrown with tall prairie grasses and other types of plants, even a few thorny shrubs and prickly pear cactuses. In front of these picnic shelters is the bathroom/shower building, which looks like it is still in good condition, at least on the outside. I could not check out the inside because the bathrooms were locked. There is a big front patio on this building and towards the front center of that area I saw alot of debris piled up, such as old, rotted wood, nails and other assorted debris. The front edge of this patio is lined with wooden railing, which must have been rather attractive looking when it was maintained regularly. The parking lot next to this building is also overgrown with vegetation. I saw the entrance and exit to this parking lot. There is a wood-rail fence that runs alongside the main park road and there are 2 gaps in it, one on each end of the parking lot, where vehicles were once able to enter the parking lot. When I walked through the tall grass growing in the former parking lot, I kicked up alot of grasshoppers at every step. There was no place to park my car except in the road, although I pulled over as far to the edge of the road as I could.
Directly across the dirt road from the former bathroom building is the dried up bed of Chicosa Lake. Now it is just a dried up, cracked-mud depression in the ground, baked hard by the relentless prairie sun. The lake was de-watered by excessive pumping of the underlying water table, the western edge of the Ogallala Aquifer. This underground reservoir serves the water needs of a large area of the Midwest. The aquifer lies underneath parts of 7 states--New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota. These other parts of the aquifer have also been severely depleted by groundwater pumping to irrigate the innumerable farms in this part of the United States, resulting in the drying up of many streams and lakes.
The parking lot next to the former bathroom/shower building, plus the access roads to all of the adjacent campsites, were dirt, just like the park's main road is dirt. This is typical of many New Mexico state parks that I have seen. I don't know why they keeps the roads unpaved, maybe they want it to look more natural.
When I got back to my car after checking out the bathroom/shower building and several of the picnic shelters and campsites, my shoes and socks were full of stickerburs, so I had to pick them all out.
Chicosa Lake State Park was closed in April of 1996, shortly after the lake dried up. The first time I was ever in Roy, in 1994, I remember seeing brown and white highway signs pointing the way to Chicosa Lake State Park.

A Sad Legacy

On a recent vacation in New Mexico, I went into Harding County, which I spoke of on my other blog "Ramblings From The Rim." This is the county in the northeastern part of that state that was severely depopulated by the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and to this day has never recovered from that traumatic period of American History. I will have more to say on Harding County in the near future, but for now, I want to concentrate on a specific part of that beautiful, but mostly deserted county. I have about 10 pictures that I took of this place and I will post them on this blog as soon as someone shows me how(The photo on this blog was put there originally by the person who set up two of my three blogs. This specific blog I set up on my own, and the photo transferred from the other two blogs when I set it up).
For about the past dozen years, I had noticed that a state park on the high plains of northeastern New Mexico had suddenly disappeared from the map. I know of several other former state parks in other states that are no longer state parks for variuos reasons, usually budget cuts. Because of budget cuts the state either gave the state park to a county and it now serves as a county park, sold the park to a private individual or company and it is now a privately owned campground or, in some cases, the state park is now part of a national park or national forest. Examples of a state park that is now a county park are Tips Park near Three Rivers, Texas; Wolf Creek Lake Park near Perryton, Texas and Painted Rocks County Park near Gila Bend, Arizona. An example of a former state park that is now a privately owned campground is Harry McAdams Park in Hobbs, New Mexico. A former state park that is now a city-owned park is Red Rock Park in Gallup, New Mexico. Examples of 2 state parks that are now Bureau of Land Management Campgrounds are Valley of Fires Park near Carrizozo, New Mexico and Newspaper Rock Campground near Monticello, Utah. An example of another former state park that is now federally-owned is Optima National Wildlife Refuge near Hardesty, Oklahoma. This wildlife refuge was once Optima Lake State Park. One last example is the Kaibab Lake Campground in Kaibab National Forest near Williams, Arizona. This was once a state park.
Well, on my recent trip to Harding County, New Mexico, I found another former state park and was shocked by what I saw! I still have a vivid picture of this place in my mind because it had such a profound effect on me.