Galisteo Basin Preserve
Over the past two decades, the wildlands, open spaces, and trails of the Galisteo Basin Preserve have become a place of recreation, inspiration, and community.
For visitors and residents, the preserve is beloved as a sanctuary and refuge. It is a magical geography that inspires and delights. It is a place where individuals find solace in quiet meditation, recreationalists explore, and families and friends commune. It is a landscape of grandeur and scale the likes of which author Wallace Stegner described as a “geography of hope.”
The Galisteo Basin Preserve has gained recognition as the largest nonprofit-owned-and-managed open space and trails network in the American West. Through the generous efforts and dedication of hundreds of volunteers, the preserve’s 12,000 acres of protected open space are interlaced with more than 48 miles of publicly accessible hiking, cycling, and equestrian trails.
The Galisteo Basin Preserve is located 14 miles south of internationally famous Santa Fe, New Mexico. A vast open space, wildlife habitat, and trails resource, the preserve is easily accessible to residents of and visitors to northern New Mexico.
Yet, by most people’s experience, the preserve feels like a world apart.
The Galisteo Basin Preserve is also a strengthening seam in the ecological fabric that stretches across privately held “working landscapes” and protected public lands from the Sierra Madres of northern Mexico to the Canadian Rockies. It’s situated at the confluence of five ecoregions that exemplify the diversity and vitality of the American Southwest.
Galisteo Basin Preserve has the Best Outdoor Trail System!
Through Commonweal’s work in partnership with the Santa Fe Fat Tire Society, New Mexico Volunteers for the Outdoors, Santa Fe Conservation Trust, Santa Fe County Open Space, and other local conservation groups and volunteers, The Santa Fe Reporter’s readers have consistently recognized the Galisteo Basin Preserve as one of Santa Fe’s most beloved trail networks.