A yellow and orange blanket of petals stretched across the foot of the mountains. Birds with red bellies darted through the clear blue sky. These were the wonders I saw when I visited public land near Castner Range about seven years ago. It was spring, the time when every year, the Mexican gold poppy blooms.
Home to 7,081 acres with a variety of wild flora and fauna, Castner Range is a marvel of nature in El Paso, and a place of historical and environmental significance. The site is named for General Joseph Castner, a U.S. Army brigadier general who fought in WWI. For years, it was used for weapons training by U.S. Army soldiers stationed at Fort Bliss. But since the range closed in the mid 1960s it has been under constant threat from developers, and various groups have been fighting to preserve it. Today, advocates are pushing hard to preserve the land by obtaining national monument status.
National monuments are pieces of land or historical places that are protected by Congress through legislation, or by the president through the Antiquities Act of 1906. National monuments can also be designated through public local input, which is what the Castner Range Coalition is attempting to accomplish. Once designated, the sites are then overseen by one of the seven land-management agencies of the country, such as the Bureau of Land Management. So far, there are only two national monuments in Texas, the Alibates Flint Quarries and the Waco Mammoth.
