Press Kit

About Valles Caldera

Valles Caldera National Preserve is at the heart of the Jemez Mountains in north-central New Mexico. The 88,900-acre park encompasses most of a 13-mile-wide volcanic caldera that contains expansive high-elevation grasslands with forested volcanic domes and meandering streams. The area preserves the ancestral homeland of many native peoples, and shares lessons from a land-use legacy of 20th century ranching and resource exploitation. The Santa Fe National Forest surrounds much of the park. The Pueblo of Santa Clara shares a boundary with the park along the northeast rim of the caldera. Bandelier National Monument is an adjacent neighbor to the southeast, and one of the three Manhattan Project National Historical Park sites is nearby in Los Alamos.

Valles Caldera National Preserve was first established on July 25, 2000 as an unprecedented national experiment in public land management through the creation of the Valles Caldera Trust. Valles Caldera National Preserve was re-designated by Congress as a unit of the National Park Service on December 19, 2014. The National Park Service assumed management of the park on October 1, 2015. In 2021, the park gained International Dark Sky Park status and was designated a Significant Thermal Feature under the Geothermal Steam Act. This added to its 1975 designation as a National Natural Landmark.

Contact Us

Contact the park's Public Information Officer by email (vall_news@nps.gov) or call 505-412-0826 for any matters concerning public affairs.

Our Mission

Located in the Jemez Mountains of north-central New Mexico, Valles Caldera National Preserve protects, preserves, and restores ecosystems and cultural landscapes within an outstanding example of a volcanic caldera for the purpose of education, scientific research, public enjoyment and use, and cultural continuity.

Images

For high resolution photographs of the park, see the photograph gallery on this page and on the park's Photograph Galleries page. For specific photograph requests, please contact us. Photographs used from this web page must be credited to NPS, unless otherwise indicated.