Gila Libre!: New Mexico's Last Wild River

by M. H. Salmon

Overview

M. H. Salmon was told, "a river named 'Gila' offered sporting fish. But this was no river. It was a stream, and standing on the bank I could see that if you picked out a riffle you could cross on foot without wetting your knees. Hardly even your ankles. I knew rivers—the St. Lawrence, the Seneca, the Oswego, the Salmon, the Black, and the Nueces. A real river could float a freighter, or at the least a barge, a yacht, a bass or drift boat. This Gila would ground a canoe." But he soon learned the river offered more than water and fish.

Gila Libre! New Mexico's Last Wild River is the story of a geographic anomaly that includes roughly four million acres of the nation's first designated (1924) wilderness area, New Mexico's largest national forest, and the state's only undammed river. Visitors might spot a beaver and a coatimundi on the same day, an elk and a javelina on the same hillside, or catch a flathead catfish and a wild trout in the same pool. Apaches roamed along the Gila's shores, as did mountain men and outlaws.

Gila Libre! tells the river's story to date, extolling what is still a unique Southwest resource and speculating on its future, which includes the threatening proposal of a major state and federal water project.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826340825
Publisher:	University of New Mexico Press
Publication date:	11/16/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	141
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

M. H. Salmon is publisher of High-Lonesome Books and the author of The Catfish as Metaphor: A Fisherman's American Journey. He lives near Silver City, New Mexico.