Development overflow

Development Encroaches on Albuquerque Horse Playground

By Emily Esterson , 3-15-06

	Los Alamos Pony Clubbers jumping and galloping at Boca Negra

It's a rite of spring: The Annual Watermelon Mountain Pony Club Horse Trials is in just two weeks, and this morning we took the horses for a final ride around the course high up on Albuquerque's West Mesa.

Seven years ago, on my first visit to the cross country course called Boca Negra, after the black volcanic rock that litters the area, I found it a desolute, cactus-y kind of place, but the jumps and the terrain were challenging enough for what we wanted to do — participate in the horse trials and have fun.

The road to Boca Negra winds up the side of the steep mesa, so steep it slows the truck and horse trailer to a crawl. On the way up you'd pass the Petroglyphs National Monument, and not much else. The road curved around to Boca, and quickly turned to a rutty, unused dirt. The only thing you'd be likely to run into on that mesa top back then were some model airplane enthusiasts--in addition to the cross country course and the rodeo arena, there was a small model airplane airport next to the start box.

Boca isn't fancy. But it's all we have for cross country fences in Albuquerque, and it's leased and maintained by the Watermelon Mountain Pony Club, on land owned by the city of Albuquerque.

But for how much longer?

Since last spring, when I went to Boca to prepare for last year's horse trials, the place is almost unrecognizable. First, the treacherously steep grade on Unser Blvd. has been flattened, and made into a four lane road with a wide bike path. No more impatient drivers riding my tail as I inch the wimpy Dodge Ram and steel horse trailer up the hill at 10 mph. At the top, a labrynthine series of curbs, stop signs, yields and so forth now require navigation--it used to be that the road went up the hill and curved off to the right. No choices, no turns, no stop signs. The road to Boca is now paved and has curbs. Across the street, three new houses have gone up, and several more are in the plywood and framing stage. There's even a tidy, ghostly cul de sac, awaiting its houses and kids on trikes.

It is only a matter of time before the city wonders what the heck it's doing holding on to a few hundred acres of windswept desert that benefit only a few hundred New Mexico equestrians when it could sell it to developers. If they do close Boca Negra, I hope they build a world-class cross country course, galloping terrain, and dressage arenas, and not just a rodeo pen, out in this phantom $30 million Equestrian Park that will accompany the Pro-Rodeo Cowboys Association's move to Albuquerque (has anyone mentioned, by the way, that the PRCA isn't in the best of financial shape?).

Between the fairgrounds and Boca, we have enough facilities for the pony club to hold its event every year--its biggest fundraiser, and the opportunity for the equestrian community to haul ass around the desert and jump cross country fences (which is about the most fun you can have on horseback). But if Boca should go, pony club, and all of its adult supporters (like me) would surely have a hard time sustaining itself. Where would the kids and ponies train? Where would the adults revisit their own pony club days? Boca's an asset we shouldn't loose, unless its replaced by something much, much better.

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