Lincoln National Forest is a unit of the U.S. Forest Service located in southern New Mexico. The Lincoln National Forest covers an extensive 1.1 million acres in southeastern New Mexico. Established by Presidential Proclamation in 1902 as the Lincoln Forest Reserve, the forest begins near the Texas border and contains lands in parts of Chaves, Eddy, Lincoln, and Otero counties. The Lincoln National Forest is home to three major mountain ranges: Sacramento, Guadalupe and Capitan. The three Ranger Districts within the forest contain all or part of a total of four mountain ranges, and include a variety of different environmental areas, from desert to heavily forested mountains and sub-alpine grasslands. Clean air, water, and soil are necessary elements that the National Forests contribute to the environment. Established to balance conservation, resource management, and recreation, the lands of the Lincoln National Forest include important local timber resources, protected wilderness areas, and popular recreation and winter sports areas. The forest headquarters is located in Alamogordo, N.M. with local offices in Carlsbad, Cloudcroft, and Ruidoso.
History
The land was inhabited in pre-Columbian times by the Niit'a-héõde band of the Mescalero Apache. The modern Lincoln National Forest traces its origins to several different forest reserves and national forests designated in the 1902-1908 period. These included the Lincoln Forest Reserve, a 545,256 acre area established July 26, 1902 around Capitan and Lincoln, the 78,480 acre Gallinas Forest Reserve established on November 5, 1906, in the Gallinas Mountains west of Gallinas, the Guadalupe National Forest, established April 19, 1907 in the mountains along the Texas border, and the Sacramento National Forest, created on April 24, 1907, to reserve the forested heights of the Sacramento Mountains near Alamogordo. Scattered throughout south-central New Mexico, these individual units contained lands in the Guadalupe, Sacramento, Sierra Blanca/White Mountains, Capitan and Gallinas ranges, and encompassed environments from the desert shrubs at the floor of the Chihuahuan Desert through forests of Piñon, Pine and Juniper to sub-alpine grasslands above the tree-line.
The process of integrating these individual units into a single, unified National Forest began in July 1908, when President Theodore Roosevelt signed Executive Order 908, which combined a number of national forests in the Southwestern states into larger units. One of the first foresters was Arthur Ringland who later founded the international relief organization, CARE. One element of this order was to add the Gallinas National Forest, a tract of land around the Gallinas Mountains west of Corona, New Mexico to the existing Lincoln National Forest. Another element of Roosevelt's Executive Order that would have a great impact on the development of the Lincoln National Forest was the decision to combine the existing Guadalupe and Sacramento National Forests into the Alamo National Forest. A wholly new administrative unit, the Alamo National Forest was headquartered in Alamogordo and led by inaugural Forest Supervisor Arthur M. Neal.
Nearly nine years later, on June 6, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson signed an Executive order that transferred the lands of the Alamo National Forest to the control of the Lincoln National Forest. As a result of this order, the main elements of the Alamo National Forest, the public lands around the Sacramento and Guadalupe Mountains, were transferred to the Lincoln, greatly expanding its size. The last major change in the Forest's boundaries came in 1945, when administrative control of the former Gallinas National Forest was transferred from the Lincoln to the sprawling Cibola National Forest. Officially transferred in 1958. the Gallinas area was renamed the Mountainair Ranger District, with its headquarters in Mountainair.
The forest
The modern Lincoln National Forest is composed of three separate units, the Smokey Bear Ranger District, headquartered in Ruidoso, the Sacramento Ranger District, headquartered in Cloudcroft, and the Guadalupe Ranger District, with its headquarters in Carlsbad.