I love everything about Baca County, but, I especially love the canyons. Just like every county in the world, we have had some very interesting things happen here. A long time ago the Cherokee Indians called Baca County home for quite a while and they left behind some amazing things. Not far from Campo is Picture Canyon. Picture Canyon is a canyon where the Native Americans left several drawing on the walls that are still very visible. Carrizo Canyon is by far my favorite place around here. Carrizo Canyon is another place that American Indian artifacts can be found along the canyon walls. Carrizo is my favorite because the east fork of Carrizo Creek flows through here and it is amazing to swim and fish in!
In 1935 the famous Dust Bowl came rolling into Baca County to wreak havoc on land and families. Due to drought and farmers constantly plowing up the topsoil to make a living, a horrible storm came in and made Baca County go from 237,000 acres under wheat production to 150 acres.
Back to the Commonwealth of Baca County, we do have all of the twelve key assets. As we do have all of the key assets, they could still be improved. For Education we have six schools around the county. For Health, Springfield has a hospital, Walsh has a clinic and Springfield also has a vet clinic. For Leisure and Recreation, we have several swimming pools, a golf course, museum, library and so many other things. For History, well we have a ton of it and it can be seen everywhere you look. Sense of Place, you can find this everywhere, whether it is sitting down at the ‘Liars Table’ at the Campo Cafe and hearing a different story from the usual guys every day or just walking into any building in Springfield and immediately getting treated like you belong here. With the Water Cycle we have excellent underground water systems. Art and Culture, we have so much art in Baca County, in Campo alone we have three amazing murals. We have so much wildlife in Baca County ranging from Prairie Chickens to the amazing Rocky Mountain Sheep. When it comes to soil, I think we have fairly good soil as most of the crops from Baca County are very healthy. For Foodshed we have the grocery store in Springfield and a grocery store in Walsh along with a couple Farmers Markets that pop up every once in a while. With Renewable Energy we have a few wind towers up. Last but not least we have Spirituality, my all time favorite asset. Spirituality is a big deal in Baca County even though most of the people here don’t even know what it means. Everybody here is somehow connected to everybody else, it doesn’t matter if they are friends or family, we all know each other somehow. With everybody knowing everybody here, this means that we all also know everything around Baca County. If I were to make a map of Baca County, it would have a line drawn from one person to everybody else, connected to everybody would be lines drawn to everything. Think of it as a dream catcher. We are everywhere.
