This is an archived version of this story, which was published in Means and Matters by Bank of the West in spring 2023. Bank of the West is now part of BMO Bank.

Standing at the edge of Castner Range, a high-desert landscape in the Franklin Mountains of El Paso, Texas, Ángel Peña takes a small green leaf from a creosote bush, crumbles it up, takes in its perfume, and embarks on a journey back to his childhood.

“It reminds you of fresh rain when you smell it,” he says. “It means the rain is near and coming in. If it’s raining nearby, it showers the creosote, and then the wind will pick up that smell. So you know freshness—that relief from the desert heat—is coming.”

Peña spent many childhood days outside enduring the sweltering Southwest sun on job sites with his late grandfather, who worked as a landscaper.  Peña grew up a mile and a half from Castner Range. But the landmark that defines El Paso provides more than just sensory experiences—it defines opportunity and holds the stories of traditions and cultures of the Frontera, or Borderlands. Ángel’s grandfather crossed into the United States from Mexico in this small west Texas town.

“This mountain range has always signified greener pastures—movement forward, water on the other side, opportunity, and growth for the family,” says Peña, who is now executive director of Nuestra Tierra Conservation Project and a leader who has been working on the proper protection of Castner Range since 2014.

In a major conservation victory, the Biden Administration recently designated Castner Range as a national monument, helping redefine what the 21st century of conservation could and should look like. One that is rooted in tradition, place, and culture. This followed Texas Representative Veronica Escobar’s introduction of the Castner Range Monument Act in April 2021 and a March 2022 visit from US Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, who hiked along Castner Range and spoke with local conservationists about federal protection. Groups like Nuestra Tierra are now celebrating—local conservationists have been pushing for Castner’s protection for more than half a century—with still much to do to see the community lead conservation vision forward.

As he speaks, Peña stands on a trail that dead-ends at a fence. The 6,672-acre desert landscape of mountains and foothills was long off-limits because it was once a military missile range. Situated between developments on three sides and Franklin Mountains State Park, Castner’s national monument designation is a significant step toward expanding conservation education to local marginalized communities and will forever protect the land’s cultural, historical, scientific, and environmental attributes. 

This spectacular landscape holds a special place in many hearts. In the springtime, fields of golden poppies speckle color onto the range’s high desert terrain, and residents come out to take family and quinceañera photos. Within Castner’s borders also lie archaeological treasures like pottery, pictographs, and petroglyphs (painted rock art). With the new designation, El Pasoans now have the opportunity to look forward to leveraging the full opportunities around recreational access within Castner Range’s vast natural areas—but even more important is protecting the artifacts, local traditions, and family history the site holds.

The designation halted ongoing development threats that began when Castner Range was decommissioned in 1966. In the 1970s, 1,230 acres of the range were transferred to developers. Today, a big box home improvement store, a national coffee shop chain, and a mattress store are among the results. The area recently dodged another handful of development attempts, which were shut down thanks to community outcry.

Peña’s organization is part of a coalition of diverse stakeholders, including their strong partner, The Conservation Alliance, that has worked tirelessly to win national monument designation for Castner Range.

Organizations including Frontera Land Alliance, Monumental Shift, National Religious Partnership for the Environment, and the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Native American tribe came together to create what he calls “endless pressure endlessly applied” toward the mission of protecting Castner Range. Here are their stories and how they led the successful campaign to save Castner Range.

Chris Gomez

Ysleta del Sur Pueblo

Chris Gomez’s ancestors first stepped foot in West Texas as a result of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in central New Mexico. When the Spanish fled the area, they took about 80 native people captive and forced them to march down the Rio Grande Valley to establish a new settlement in present-day El Paso. Today, their descendants are known as the Tigua people of the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, a federally recognized tribe (“Pueblo” is Spanish for “village.” Spanish explorers used it to refer to the settlements of Native Americans. Today, it describes the descendants of Ancestral Puebloan People of the Southwest). Ysleta del Sur Pueblo is one of several Native groups that have called the Castner Range area home over the centuries.

Gomez has worked for the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo for about 15 years, mostly in education. He’s also a former lieutenant governor of the Pueblo and was involved in the successful push to create the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument in neighboring Las Cruces, New Mexico. 

When Gomez looks upon Castner Range, he envisions an immersive outdoor classroom for Pueblo youth that could help connect them with their heritage.

“I can take a group of 60 or 70 kids and get them to see breathtaking views,” he says. “And the great thing about it is that all of it is aboriginal hunting grounds for us and gathering grounds.”

At least 41 archaeological sites have been identified and recorded at Castner. Archaeologists have also discovered projectile points (spears or arrows, depending on size), pottery, and pictographs. Gomez believes they have only scratched the surface of this living museum.

“I have no doubt in my mind that there are artifacts belonging to my tribe,” he says.

Various Native American groups still consider the area sacred because of its vegetation. Gomez says members of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo gather pigments for ceremonies and clay for pottery. Other groups, like the Mescalero Apache, source agave from the area for puberty ceremonies. Members of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo also participate in the city’s Poppies Fest, which celebrates the arrival of these golden flowers on the range each spring.

Gomez stresses the cultural importance for Native communities when it comes to protecting the area, saying, “There’s always that eminent danger there that if you don’t do something to conserve it, then other interests are going to come in, and they may not be the best stewards of that land.” 

The recent national monument designation ensures that tribal traditions survive.

Ángel Peña

Nuestra Tierra Conservation Project

A recent study found that 95 percent of low-income El Pasoans living near Castner Range are nature-deprived, with dwindling access to parks and other natural spaces.

Access, Peña says, all depends on who you are. Castner Range sits on the east side of the Franklin Mountains. Franklin Mountains State Park and its 100 miles of trails sit to the west, flanking communities where incomes are higher—and the park’s $10-per-person entrance fee is less burdensome. “Castner Range borders the more impoverished part of the community that has zero public access to anything on that side of the mountain,” Peña says.

But the fight to protect Castner Range goes beyond recreational opportunities, he emphasizes. With all the clean-up required at the former military site, Peña says no one expects public access on day one—nor is it the most important reason to protect the land.

“El Paso is the only city with mountains in West Texas,” Peña says. “It’s home to the largest bi-national community in North America, and Castner Range signifies opportunity for families because of where it stands. But public lands don’t necessarily need to be about hiking or your charismatic flora and fauna. Twenty-first-century conservation can prioritize culture and tradition.”

Nuestra Tierra works in New Mexico and Texas to engage Latinx/Hispanic borderland community members, and introduce them to issues surrounding public lands and waters. These relationships help build public support, a major advantage when trying to convince policymakers to protect lands like Castner.

Forging a conservation partnership could start with something as simple as grabbing a taco with someone, Peña says.

“Here in El Paso, organizing looks like good food, looks like good music,” he says. “It looks like prayer in the morning. It looks like a good hike and the sharing of memories. And so that’s what conservation is for us.”

Those relationships keep locals energized for yet another petition, yet another letter to representatives, or yet another fight against development threats as they come (which Peña admits can get tiring after decades).

“Which is why we prioritize trust in the building of authentic relationships,” he says. “Because with that, then we can work through the thick stuff, through the good stuff. But then you come away with a product that can withstand any political landscape or any political dynamics because it’s so rooted in place and community.”

Emily Gomez

Frontera Land Alliance & Nuestra Tierra Conservation Project

Native El Pasoan Emily Gomez came of age in a city park that borders Castner Range to the west. As a first-generation Mexican-American teen in El Paso, it was a place where she could just be herself. She was introduced to the landscape through friends during high school.

“We would always come hang out here and just hike around, walk around,” recalls Gomez (no relation to Chris Gomez). “And we were young—at 15 or 16, you don’t have much to do.”

Although she did not yet know about Castner’s conservation importance, the land gifted her a sense of freedom. 

Gomez recently began working with Peña at Nuestra Tierra, but when she shared her story, she was the field operations manager for the Frontera Land Alliance. In that role, she worked to make outdoor recreation available for all El Pasoans.

The new national monument will allow underserved communities to “connect and see what it’s really like having access to such a big open space,” she says. The relative flatness of a portion of Castner also makes it more accessible to people with differing physical abilities. 

Gomez has educated fellow El Pasoans about the importance of protecting Castner Range. Frontera Land Alliance and Nuestra Tierra work closely together, meeting weekly to align their work. Peña describes Frontera as “the locals there on the ground, and the folks who wake up every day to go shake hands or get petition signatures.” This saw Gomez doing anything from chatting with citizens at farmers’ markets to engaging with teachers and students at school events.

Gomez would also take local children out to a small portion of Castner that was accessible to the public to educate them about wildlife and plants. Learning sometimes comes about in quirky ways, she says.

“They get really excited to see poop,” Gomez laughs. “They think it is the craziest thing ever that animals don’t all poop the same. And it’s cool seeing them get so excited for something they might have full-on access to at some point in their lives.”

Castner Range, Gomez says, is a place where anyone—young or old—can get out and explore nature. In a city without a lot of green space, she says, this is vitally important. Today, El Pasoans have even less access to Castner Range than they did just a few decades ago, when more fencing went up in the 1990s. National monument status, however, will ensure that the area is accessible for all El Pasoans far into the future.

“Future generations will be able to see Castner Range as more than just somewhere to see from afar,” Gomez says. “Perhaps they will be able to hike it and go deeper in to camp and actually be able to enjoy it at its full potential.”

Rabbi Ben Zeidman

National Religious Partnership for the Environment

“In Judaism, we have a blessing for everything, and we have a special blessing for when we encounter a beautiful, large-scale work of creation in nature, including mountains,” Rabbi Ben Zeidman says as he begins to speak in Hebrew. Looking upon Castner Range from the nearby Museum of Archaeology, he praises God.

Zeidman is a rabbi at El Paso’s Temple Mount Sinai, which he says has been active in social justice and community social service since the mid-1800s. He’s also part of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, a group that advocates for environmental action across the US. Along with Nuestra Tierra, the national interfaith organization is a member of Monumental Shift, a coalition that campaigns for national monument designations in racially and ethnically diverse communities. 

Zeidman says environmental protection is a natural role for religious leaders to embody. He sees clues to God’s will for humankind’s relationship with the Earth in his Jewish faith. In the Torah’s creation story, Adam, the first human, is created from soil. Though Adam is commanded to master and subdue the Earth, he is also told to tend and care for it, Zeidman explains.

And then there’s Judaism’s concept of Tikkun Olam, Hebrew for “repair of the world.”

“That’s about how we engage with each other and about the justice that we are supposed to pursue in the context of community and of society,” Zeidman says. “But it’s also about how we engage with and how we… repair the damage that we’ve already done over previous generations as well.” Tikkun Olam has inspired climate change action and marine conservation elsewhere.

Zeidman’s faith compelled him to support the preservation of Castner Range as a national monument. The natural wonder, he says, is as much a part of El Paso’s soul as it is its landscape.

“One of the things I found when I came to El Paso was a really deeply connected interfaith community,” he says. “The relationships there were already very strong, and I really think that has a lot to do with the presence of something natural that inspires us to remember the divine.”

A Coalition with Its Eyes on What’s Next

As this new era begins for Castner Range, the coalition’s day-to-day work continues in El Paso. Nuestra Tierra is finishing up an urban mural and is working with a local museum on a community education project about the range. The annual Poppies Fest celebrating Castner Range’s springtime floral explosion took place throughout March. Coalition members will continue working together with the Department of Defense to help design a management plan that will best conserve the new national monument and map out future public access opportunities. 

“It’s not done once (Biden) signs the papers,” Peña says. “It’s just kind of alright, here we go. Chapter two, guys.”

Recreational opportunities may be years away, but Peña still looks forward to taking his daughter’s quinceañera photos against the backdrop of Castner’s poppies this year. For now, the range “can really just be about what the place means to the locals who live there,” he says. “Above and beyond taking that hike with that new puffy coat, it can really just be there to be there. So I can take pictures with my daughter.”