Aldo Leopold House

Staying at the House

• The house accommodates up to eight people: two queen and six twin beds.
• Guests are responsible for their own safety and certain necessities. A full list is available on the rental page on Recreation.gov.
• The house is located in a rural area of Northern New Mexico. There is very limited cell phone service, and the nearest gas station is located 30 miles nort in Antonito, CO.

Background

On February 2, 1912, Aldo Leopold wrote to his fiancée, Estella Bergère, in Santa Fe that the Forest Service had appropriated $650 to build a new supervisor’s quarters he had designed at Tres Piedras, N.M. At the time, Leopold was about to become the new forest supervisor of the Carson National Forest in Tres Piedras.

Later that year, he built the house, which the newly married couple decided to call “Mi Casita.” Leopold was transferred to Tres Piedras from the Apache National Forest in Arizona in 1911. It was here that he started to formulate his land ethic that would find its way into his classic, "Sand County Almanac." He started to see land holistically and to recognize that this perspective was essential to its wise management. Today we call this ecosystem management and Leopold is considered by many to be the father of wildlife ecology.