The Forest includes the San Mateo, Magdalena, Datil, Bear, Gallina, Manzano, Sandia, Mt.

The Forest also manages four National Grasslands that stretch from northeastern New Mexico eastward into the Texas Panhandle and western Oklahoma.

[5] The Mountainair Ranger District manages national forestland in Torrance, northwestern Lincoln, and eastern Valencia counties, which are in central New Mexico.

The Cibola’s Magdalena District manages land in south central New Mexico in western Socorro, northeastern Catron, and northern Sierra counties.

The District has roots in the Gila Forest Reserve, created by President William McKinley in 1899, making the U.S. Forest Service the “oldest continuous business in Magdalena.”[6] Cibola biomes range from Chihuahuan desert to short grass prairie to piñon-juniper to sub-alpine spruce and fir.

Animals represented include: Due to the Rio Grande, a large variety of migrating waterfowl and other birds follow the river's flyway during the spring and fall.

[8] The Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy also ranked the Arizona-New Mexico Mountain Ecoregion, within which the Magdalena and Mt.

[7] The Cibola offers an abundance of recreational opportunities including picnicking, backpacking, camping, skiing, hiking, wildlife-viewing, star-gazing, horseback-riding, hunting and mountain biking as well as driving for pleasure and enjoying the aerial Sandia Peak Tramway with a restaurant and skiing at the top.

Additional multiple uses that occur on the Cibola National Forest include grazing, mining, logging, and oil/gas development.

[13] Outlaw renegades Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch and notorious Apaches like Cochise and Geronimo have ties to the San Mateos.

Vicks Peak was named after Victorio, “a Mimbreño Apache leader whose territory included much of the south and southwest New Mexico.”[14] Famous for defying relocation orders in 1879 and leading his warriors “on a two-year reign of terror before he was killed,” Victorio is at least as highly regarded as Geronimo or Cochise among Apaches.

Stories of depredations by the Apache Kid, and of his demise, became so common and dramatic that in southwestern folklore they may be exceeded only by tales of lost Spanish gold.

We know this by an essay written by Aldo Leopold in 1919 where he documents stumbling upon the remains of a recently abandoned Indian hunting camp.

[16] While some mining activity, involving gold, silver, and copper, occurred in the southern part of the range near the end of the nineteenth century,[17] the prospecting/mining remnants are barely visible today due to collapse, topographic screening, and vegetation regrowth.

[13] In 2008 the Trigo Fire burned 13,709 acres (55.48 km2) mostly within the Mountainair Ranger District of the Cibola National Forest.