by: Jay W. Sharp
“The Organ Mountains, one of the most picturesque and rugged mountain ranges in the Southwest, form the skyline approximately10 mi east of Las Cruces, New Mexico…, in southern Doña Ana County….,” said William R. Seager in his report Geology of Organ Mountains and southern San Andres Mountains, New Mexico, 1981. “The row of jutting, fluted, bare-rock pinnacles known as the Needles – the backbone of the range – can be seen on a favorable day from nearly 100 mi away, making them probably the most familiar landmark in the region…. Their stark, sawtooth profile, their challenging slopes and changing moods have made the Needles a favorite of artists, photographers, and mountain climbers…, as well as a daily pleasure to the people who live within their view.”
According to some sources, the “jutting, fluted, bare-rock pinnacles” reminded early (and probably homesick) Spaniards of the pipes of the organs in the cathedrals of their faraway homeland, and that gave rise to the name for the range.
Basic Geologic History
The Organ Mountain range is one of 10 in New Mexico that parallel the eastern edge of the Rio Grande Rift—a 50-million-year-old fracture that has roiled the earth’s crust and defined our historic river’s course from Colorado southward through New Mexico’s heartland.
The Organ’s beginnings can be traced back some 32 million years, when magma from the earth’s interior rose to intrude into depositional strata laid down by warm shallow seas hundreds of millions of years earlier.
In the northern parts of the range, the magma cooled and solidified before it erupted, and the sedimentary overburden eroded away over time, revealing those craggy, light gray rock pinnacles, or the Needles. The remnants of depositional strata remain today at the foot of the pinnacles. The Needles rise to about 9000 feet elevation, nearly a mile above the surrounding Chihuahuan Desert floor.
In the southern part of the range, the magma did burst through the sedimentary strata, ejecting lava, rock and ash over 100 square miles of the landscape, according to a Bureau of Land Management release. It raised mountains but also triggered a structural collapse that we now call the Organ Caldera.
By comparison, the San Andres Mountains and Franklin Mountains – other ranges paralleling the east side of the Rio Grande Rift, just north and south of the Organs – formed tens of millions of years ago from the depositional strata laid down by the ancient seas. Driven by the tectonic forces of our planet, mountainous blocks of the stratified land fractured, rose, fell, tilted, buckled and folded—dipping generally to the west. Both the San Andres and the Franklins have relatively minor igneous rock exposures.
Over time, the Organs, with their igneous origins, developed more varied topographical features, rainfall patterns and environmental niches from the desert floor up to the mountain peaks, and the range became home for more diverse communities of desert organisms, which have been especially nurtured in the narrow canyons that receive water funneled down from the bare rock pinnacles.
Organisms of the Soil and the Rock Surfaces
Altogether, the Organ Mountain range – probably the most botanically diverse range in all of New Mexico – hosts, for example, some 870 vascular plant species, or plants with tissues that conduct water, minerals and other materials through the roots, stems and leaves. These include not only several rare species – some growing nowhere else on earth – but also, surprisingly, some 30 species of fern, possibly more than any other mountain range in our state.
The Organs also serve as home for various species of nonvascular plants, or bryophytes—small herbaceous plants that form thick mats on rock and soil surfaces or tree trunks. These include some 87 species of the mosses and 8 species of liverworts, according to authorities Lloyd R. Stark and Richard C. Castetter, “A Preliminary List of Bryophytes from the Organ Mountains, New Mexico,” The Bryologist, 1982. The bryophytes are the oldest types of plants on earth.
In many areas, the Organ’s rocky slopes support wide swaths of lichen, a colorful interdependent union between a fungus and an algae. The fungus gives the lichen colony shape and form, soaks up water and nutrients, and provides reproductive features. The algae feeds the colony through photosynthesis, which yields the carbohydrates essential for survival. The lichen produces an acid that eventually breaks down its stony home to produce new soils.
Between the desert floor and the higher peaks, the Organs embrace three “life zones,” variably nourished – says the Bureau of Land Management – by from 3 to 21 inches of rainfall annually, with the heaviest precipitation typically occurring at the higher elevations. Each zone is defined by the “plant and animal distributions as influenced by elevation, temperature, moisture, and exposure.” The zones grade one into the other with variations within each.
The lowest of the three – labeled the Lower Sonoran Life Zone by biological scientists – extends from the desert floor up the mountain slopes to about 5000 feet. It hosts varied plant species with the dominant including mesquite, creosote and grama grasses. The second highest life zone – the Upper Sonoran Life Zone – extends from about 5000 feet upward to some 7500 feet. Its dominant plant species include various oaks, junipers and acacias. The third and highest life zone in the Organs – the Transition Life Zone – ranges upward from some 7500 feet to near the top. It features Ponderosa pine, oaks, junipers and mountain mahogany.
“In the rugged topography of the Organ Mountains a high degree of microenvironmental variation occurs in large stands…” said W. A. Dick-Peddie and W. H. Moir in Vegetation of the Organ Mountains, New Mexico. “…the activities of deer, and micropatterns of drainage, runoff and erosion in large randomly located stands all contribute to the diversity…”
The Wildlife
The Organs also provide a home for a range of wildlife, including some 80 species of mammals, 185 species of birds, 60 species of reptiles and amphibians, and a galaxy of bugs (or, to be scientific, “arthropods,” which have exoskeletons, segmented bodies and jointed legs). The mammals include, for a few examples, the Colorado chipmunk, desert cottontails, black-tailed jackrabbits, mule deer, gray foxes, coyotes, bobcats and, occasionally, even a mountain lion. The birds range from the black-chinned humming bird to the golden eagle. The reptiles include numerous lizard and snake species with, perhaps most notably, three different rattlers—the western diamondback, the black-tailed rattler and the banded rock rattler. The bugs, from butterflies and moths to walking sticks to assassin bugs to harvester ants to paper wasps to scorpions to centipedes, may delight the eye, intrigue the mind, or just sting or bite your skin.
Human History
The Organ Mountains, with a few fairly dependable sources of water, have drawn the human species to its slopes for thousands of years.
Hunting and gathering peoples drove their spears into mule deer and bighorn sheep (`now extirpated from the Organs), netted desert cottontails and black-tailed jackrabbits, and harvested the produce of juniper and other plants. Prehistoric agriculturists raised corn, beans, squash and probably other plants near drainages fed by water from the mountains; they pounded grains into coarse flour in bed-rock mortars near their rock shelters; they painted mystical images on stone surfaces near their rock shelters. Nomadic raiders – the Mescalero Apaches – descended from the Organs to the Rio Grande valley to inflict a heavy toll on early Hispanic and Anglo settlers, robbing them of provisions, horses and even women and children.
European descendants looked to the mountains for vengeance, treasure, ranching, escape, healing and spirituality.
Pioneering Hispanics hunted down and fought Apaches on the mountain slopes. In 1861, the Confederates, under Lieutenant Colonel John Robert Baylor, cut through an Organ Mountain pass to overtake and capture a fleeing Union force at San Augustine Springs, at the northern end of the range. In 1908, cowboy Wayne Brazel shot famed lawman Pat Garrett to death near San Augustine Pass, at the northern end of the Organs. (Today, Garrett lies buried in the Las Cruces Masonic Cemetery.)
In the late 18th century, according to one legend, a Spanish soldier prospecting near San Augustine Pass discovered the gold that would become the storied Lost Padre Mine. In the 19th century, other prospectors dug into the Organ’s slopes from the northern to the southern end, sometimes striking commercially valuable deposits of gold, silver, iron, lead and other minerals. Organ, New Mexico, a small unincorporated community just west of San Augustine Pass, had its origins as a mining camp. (Today, there are no longer any mining activities in the Organs.)
In the late 19th century, ranchers began moving livestock onto the grassy flanks of the mountains, and, over the decades, well-known local, W. B. Cox, and his family emerged as the predominant land holders and cattlemen on both the eastern and western sides of the range. The Cox home, on the west side, now serves as the visitor center for the Organ Mountain National Recreation Area.
In the 1870’s, Confederate Colonel Eugene Van Patten – a native of New York State and a nephew of famed stagecoach line founder John Butterfield – built a 16-room resort in a secluded retreat on the west side of the Organs, near a small issue of water called Dripping Springs. There – at “Van Patten’s Mountain Camp” – he hosted notables such as Garrett, widely known for killing Billy the Kid at Fort Sumner, and the fabled Pancho Villa, legendary revolutionary leader across northern Mexico.
In 1917, after Van Patten went bankrupt, doctors acquired his property, added new structures, and converted the facilities into a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients. Eventually, the Cox family would add the resort/sanatorium – in ruins – to its ranchland holdings.
In 1869 – in one of the stranger stories of human presence in the Organ Mountain range – 69-year-old Agostini-Justiniani, an Italian holy man, healer and wanderer with noble blood in his veins, took up the life of a hermit in a shallow cave not far from today’s visitor center. Within a few months, he died violently at the hands of an unknown assailant. Today, he lies buried in the Mesilla Cemetery, with a tombstone bearing the name “John Mary Justiniani,” south of the community’s central plaza.
Explore the Organs
For those with a love for our Southwestern mountain ranges and desert basins, the Organ Mountains hold high promise for adventure and discovery.
For example, on the east side of the Organs, you can hike the 4 1/2-mile-long Pine Tree Trail, which loops upward from the Upper Sonoran Life Zone through the Transition Life Zone. Toward the northern end of the range, you can hike six miles through the pass that Confederate Lieutenant Baylor and his forces followed in their march to capture the Union force. On the western side, toward the southern end, you can hike the three-mile-long Soledad Canyon Trail/Bar Canyon Loop, passing the ruins of a small stone cabin that will give you a sense of the isolation and loneliness of the life of an early resident. From the visitor center, you can make the short hike, on an ascending rocky road, past Dripping Springs, up to the ruins of Van Patten’s Mountain Camp and the sanatorium. From a picnic area not far from the visitor center, you can make a short hike up Fillmore Canyon, passing an abandoned early 20th century mining and milling site, to reach an intermittent waterfall—one of the few in southern New Mexico. Also from the picnic area, you can make the brief walk up to La Cueva – or, in English, The Cave – where the Italian hermit, Agostini-Justiniani, lived and died in 1869 and where prehistoric peoples lived in earlier centuries, leaving the cave ceiling blackened by the smoke from their campfires and earthen floor packed with the remnants of their cultures.
If you hold a passion for mountain climbing, you will find a number of challenging peaks and varying ascent routes in the range. Be aware, however, that, as Herbert E. Ungnade said in Guide to the New Mexico Mountains, “Climbing in the Organs is rather different from other mountains in New Mexico. It is necessary to carry water. One must learn to avoid the ever-present cactus, thornbush, and yucca, and climbers frequently clap hands to induce rattlesnakes to rattle so that they may be avoided.” Purportedly, German rocket engineers – who came with the famed Wernher Von Braun to the White Sands Missile Range after World War II to help America develop a guided missile program – became the first to climb several of the Organ Mountain peaks.
In the late spring and early summer, you may discover the mountain flanks in bloom—provided some moisture has fallen in the preceding months. You will find, for instance, that the prickly pear, cholla and barrell cacti all produce strikingly colorful blooms. You may find the Apache plume awash in blooms. You will see some of the mescal and lechuguilla agaves – Chihuahuan Desert marker plants – producing tall bloom stalks that signal an elegant and decorative end to their lives.
Most likely in early morning or late afternoon, you may find mule deer feeding, predators hunting, a hummingbird sipping, an eagle soaring, or a lizard courting. Looking closely, you will encounter a diversity of butterflies, bees, beetles and many other insects.
In the monsoonal season (July through September) or during the occasional winter storms, be sure to bring your brush, paints and easel or your camera. With luck, you will encounter a thunderstorm and a rainbow embracing the Organs, with the slopes aglow in the warm light of a late afternoon sun. Or you may see the Needles, snow-blanketed, revealed by clouds drawn aside like the curtains on a Broadway stage.
You will be reminded that “Their stark, sawtooth profile, their challenging slopes and changing moods have made the Needles a favorite of artists, photographers, and mountain climbers…, as well as a daily pleasure to the people who live within their view.”