The remote Jornado del Muerto may be compromised by Virgin Galactic's Spaceport. (Jean Fulton, El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro Trail Association)

British tycoon Sir Richard Branson's newest venture—tours of outer space—is set to launch in 2009. Virgin Galactic is planning to build a $225 million Spaceport on a lonely site in the middle of nowhere, 45 miles northeast of Las Cruces, N.M.

But is it the middle of nowhere? Though little-known, El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, the oldest Euro-American trade route in the country, is adjacent to the Spaceport site. Last month the National Trust named the national historic trail one of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. Pending regulatory approval, the Spaceport will be the first commercial center for outer-space tourism, launching passengers who have paid $200,000 per ride over a 90-mile section of the trail named "Jornada del Muerto," or Journey of Death, by those who traveled between Mexico City and Santa Fe, and into orbit.

The convergence of two forces—a burgeoning market for commercial space travel and the need to preserve a cultural heritage that defined the Southwest—is taking place in a very rural and sparsely populated part of New Mexico. Subsequently, the creation of a spaceport and its influence over the valley's future, as a debate, has been circumscribed to southern New Mexico.

Known as the "Royal Road," the 1,500-mile-long path connected Mexico City to Santa Fe and the San Juan Pueblo. Formed to further Spain's silver trade through mining in its northern territories, the trail first came into being in 1598 as the first expedition from the Spanish colony followed the Rio Grande River. Their trail connected a series of footpaths that the indigenous people of the American Southwest used for thousands of years. According to El Camino Real's historians, the story of the route's flow of commerce, religion, settlers, soldiers, and cultures refutes the premise of the Wild West's settlement.

Seven years ago, the 404 miles of the trail that run through New Mexico were designated a National Historic Trail, run by the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management.

Archaeologists on the Royal Road (Jean Fulton)

Although the trail ceased to be an important artery for cultural and commercial use more than 200 years ago, in certain sections, traces of the rutted paths left by wagon wheels and animals are still visible. Through central Albuquerque the path is literally paved over and used by cars. El Camino Real parallels highways and railroads and runs roughly in tandem with the Rio Grande River, with the exception of the Jornada del Muerto, where the Spaceport will be. In that desert, the vastness and solitude of the landscape remains intact.

New Mexico has been vying for the spaceport since the early 1990s. Former spaceport director Rick Homes, who resigned July 2, says that the facility had to be located on state land within the restricted air space of White Sands Missile Range and beyond any flood plain. The runway will be three miles from the trail.

"When standing on the Yost escarpment and looking at the huge kilowatt power lines a couple of hundred feet high, they are practically invisible from the trail," Homes says. He says that in the simulations they have created, using 80 to 150 foot tall buildings required by the facility, suggest that the vastness of the place will hid the development, which will cover roughly 1400 acres within the state's 18,000 acre holding. "We recognize the Spaceport will impact the nature of the valley, but there are lots of things we can do and are willing to do to minimize it."

Since the Ansari-X prize competition sent the first non-astronaut into orbit in 2004, a race between billionaires has ensued to fund a commercial space travel enterprise. Because the reality of these trips' logistics remains unknown, questions about road closure, security, and trail access to Jornada del Muerto during rocket launches are unanswered. According to Aaron Mahr Yanez, a superintendent of the National Trails System, "We don't know what the issues will be."

"This is a juggernaut of a project," says Daniel Carey, director of the National Trust's Southwest Office. "It has the full political backing of the state's popular governor, Bill Richardson, who is running for President. It has the commercial will and charisma of Sir Richard Branson, head of Virgin, behind it. There is a sense of inevitability about the project, in terms of progress and technology," he says. No construction can begin until the environmental-impact statement is completed; that report opens to public scrutiny in October.

Potential launch pad site (Jean Fulton)

El Camino Real's designation as a national historic trail brings with it neither rules on how to manage the trail nor regulations for land use. And, because of funding shortfalls within the two federal agencies managing the trail, no comprehensive management plan exists, leaving the trail without any guidelines for its future. Carey says wind farms, mining, and landfills are all possible along the trail, so an earnest management plan is critical. While New Mexicans are steeped in the cultural heritage of colonial Spain and the importance to America's development that Camino Real embodies, that heritage is largely unknown outside the southwestern United States. "If a Spaceport were planned by the Oregon Trail, wouldn't there be a larger outcry?" Carey says.

While Rick Homes agrees that there should be a management plan as well as a plan limiting development with a 20-mile radius around the spaceport, he also acknowledges that those two items are beyond his agency's control to deliver. And achieving either will require a delicate collaboration with ranchers and state and federal land holders along Camino Real.

Within New Mexico, there is little objection to the Spaceport development. Because the trail is difficult to trace with exactitude on a map, Jim Walker, Southwest regional director of the Archeological Trust in Santa Fe, asks, "How can you preserve something you can't find?"

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