Gila Libre!: New Mexico's Last Wild River

By M.H. Salmon and M.H. Dutch Salmon

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0826340822
• ISBN13: 9780826340825
• Release Date: November 2008
• Publisher: Unm Press
• Length: 141 Pages
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.9" x 8.8"