Secluded between a mesa jutting out of the valley floor and the imposing wall of the Sangre de Cristo range, the part of the San Luis Valley that holds the Sanchez Reservoir feels like a secret place.

This sanctuary had inhabitants one afternoon in July, as a sheet of rain rolled across the expanse. Over a hundred of the valley’s wild horses had gathered to seek water at the much-depleted reservoir. They dotted the landscape, mares in different bands huddled together, tails flashing. A few stallions kept vigilance on the perimeter and each other.

The mustangs of the San Luis Valley defy easy definitions. Despite a credible link to some of the first Spanish expeditions into North America, the animals are not considered true wild horses under U.S. law, nor are they protected by private ownership. They exist in a legal no-man’s land, living by the goodwill of off-grid homesteaders and the tolerance of ranchers.

One of Colorado’s most recognizable works of sculpture, the infamous blue horse nicknamed “Blucifer” at Denver International Airport, was partly inspired by the mustangs in the San Luis Valley. Yet, depending on where they graze, the horses can be loaded up to sell at slaughterhouses or shot where they stand without legal repercussions.

For nearly 30 years, their fiercest advocate has been a petite, white-haired woman named Judy Barnes. From an off-grid cabin on top of a mesa where she lived alone, Barnes tracked, protected, fed and doctored wild horses through multiple generations. She identifies many by name.

The 78-year-old still pays thousands for water hauls to help the herd limp through drought conditions. She has a long and bitter list of enemies who take or harm horses. When a mare was hit on the highway the week before, she was the one called to help put the animal down and arrange the emergency adoption of the foal.

“I won’t leave the horses ever,” she said. “I love them.”

Facing personal setbacks and declining health, Barnes is hoping to inspire another zealous horse lover to take over. But wild horses, no matter their status, face an existential crisis.

“If we can’t find a solution, we risk losing everything,” said Cindy Wright, an advocate with the Wild Horse Warriors for Sand Wash Basin.

What makes a horse wild?

Barnes has beliefs nurtured by a life lived going her own way. In her solitary spans up on the mesa, she’s had encounters with aliens and Bigfoot. She believes in past lives, both for herself and for horses.

One of her most adamant beliefs is not paranormal: that horses are a native species to North America. The latest science would say she’s right, with an important caveat.

Members of the genus Equus originated in North America and spread into Asia and Europe. There’s evidence that humans hunted an ancestral horse at the end of the last Ice Age. But like many large Ice Age animals, that horse seems to have gone extinct. No conclusive genetic evidence links modern horses with their homegrown ancestors.

The species returned to the continent on Spanish ships, carrying Spanish explorers to the subjugation of northern Mexico. Nick Saenz, assistant vice president of academic affairs and a history professor at at Adams State University, says the first modern horse in the San Luis Valley could have been in the Oñate expedition of 1598 to claim the Rio Grande River.

The colonial project hit a snag in 1680, when the Pueblo people organized a coordinated blitz to regain modern New Mexico. With the Spanish fleeing south in a hurry, Saenz said they would have unwillingly left many horses behind.

“It’s such a prized possession for so long that if you lost one, you looked for them,” he said.

The revolt held out 12 years, long enough for a new North American horse to spread like wildfire. A 2023 study published in Science showed that horse populations likely spread faster than European exploration, weaving into indigenous cultures.

By the time San Luis, Colorado’s oldest town, was founded in 1851, wild horses had likely been on the landscape for nearly two hundred years.

“They’ve been here in the San Luis (Valley) since the time of the Spanish,” said Saenz.

None of that background means much for the San Luis Valley wild horses. The only date that matters for the legal designation of mustangs is 1971 – the year Congress passed the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act.

The act directed agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management to establish herd management areas where wild horses could be managed and protected. If an animal falls outside one of those areas, it is technically a feral horse and treated like unclaimed livestock.

The San Luis Valley horses, of uncertain origins and grazing mostly on private land, did not make the list of federally recognized herds.

“It’s this regulation gray area,” said Wayne East, the agriculture and wildlife programs manager at the Colorado Department of Agriculture.

‘To hell with the horses’

The mustangs are an ongoing point of contention in the San Luis Valley, especially in a bone-dry year. Opinions divide the off-gridders and ranchers, the multigenerational valley families and out-of-state transplants.

“There’s a little bit of a social tension there where the horses could even be a proxy,” said Saenz.

Signs seasoned with bullet holes warn travelers to look out for horses on the stretch of highway between San Luis and Costilla, just over the border in New Mexico. Collisions are a fact of life for valley people and travelers on their way to Taos and points south.

San Luis Valley land rights activist Shirley Romero Otero said one of her family members has hit a horse three times, twice totaling their car.

“They can be a nuisance,” she said.

With most of the valley in extreme drought this year, the horses are motivated to cross back and forth from the relative safety of the mesa to known water sources like the Rio Grande. Barnes said ten have been hit this year.

The horses often end up grazing in the same place as commercial livestock. Elliott Salazar, a lifelong valley resident and rancher, said ranchers depend on BLM land allotments for cattle grazing. The allotments are limited by the number of animals the land can support each year, and the horses affect that calculation.

Salazar said he would like to see the mustang population managed.

“I feel like they ought to really look at the numbers,” he said.

Romero Otero appreciates the horses but believes livelihoods take precedence.

“I can assure you, hands down, most of the people here are going to say to hell with the horses, it’s the cattle that need to be protected, and I have to say I agree with them,” she said.

On the other hand, some of the mustang allies overlap with the San Luis Valley demographic described in Ted Conover’s Cheap Land Colorado: low-budget off-gridders seeking the “call of raw land.”

Until last year, Barnes was one of about 25 people who lived on the mesa where the horses tend to gather – once San Pedro, now widely known as the Wild Horse Mesa. She said her neighbors, half jokingly, are “survivalists, hiding from somebody, or they’re crazy.”

Unidentified remains found on the mesa are key evidence in the ongoing criminal investigation against the Costilla County sheriff, who was indicted this year on charges related to the alleged mishandling of a human body. Half of his deputies are also facing charges, some in a different incident. A new sheriff was appointed, and outside agencies have been lending assistance, but Barnes said she felt the area was essentially lawless.

Its desolation makes the craggy mesa one of the safest places for the horses. The area is subdivided, but a low water table makes significant development all but impossible. The residents, mostly off-gridders, tend to like and look after the various stallions’ bands.

“The ones that are there love the horses,” Barnes said. “That’s why they moved there.”

Her own off-grid cabin was a popular gathering place for the horses up until a dramatic setback last year. While she was away from home, a carbon monoxide leak triggered an explosion that blew the cabin to pieces.

She’s been making the transition off the mesa to lower altitudes since then. She said the horses told her to.

“I’m kind of physically and mentally worn out,” she said.

Roundups and darting

Most of the horses at the Sanchez Reservoir kept their distance, but one stout stallion peeled off from the group, making a beeline for Barnes.

She knew him and his parentage well, introducing him as Milagro.

The horse’s gentleness contrasted with the mosaic of scars on his neck from fights with other stallions. He followed Barnes back to her car for treats, keeping pace as she stepped gingerly over the valley floor’s basalt rubble piles.

Self-taught, Barnes has changed her philosophy on caring for the horses over time. She used to bring tours to see them, but now feels that too much human interaction makes the mustangs tame. In the past, she has bought captured mustangs at auction to set loose in the valley, a controversial practice.

Barnes would prefer no interference from policymakers or experts on the matter. She believes the herd has survived because it is overlooked. She is opposed to any intervention by the BLM, which she sees as an enemy of wild horses.

“They just want to dispose of them,” she said.

The Bureau of Land Management oversees Colorado’s four herd-management areas, all on the Western Slope: Little Bookcliffs, Piceance-East Douglas, Sand Wash Basin and Spring Creek Basin. There, wild horses have a complicated status: they are protected, but cannot exceed an agency-determined number above the land’s carrying capacity.

Half of Colorado’s management areas exceed BLM’s numbers, according to 2025 population counts. East, the Colorado Department of Agriculture program manager, said that horses are one of the only large mammals on the continent that are neither harvested by humans nor hunted by natural predators.

As a result, populations can boom in the wild. When a mustang herd is deemed too large, the BLM plans a roundup to remove horses.

“The goal is to maintain a population that the available habitat can support over the long term while protecting the health of the range and other multiple uses of public lands,” a BLM spokesperson wrote in a response to The Gazette.

Traditionally, the agency has used helicopters to drive horses into pens. The practice has seen criticism, including from Colorado Gov. Jared Polis.

Once rounded up, wild horses can be adopted, sold or end up in long-term holding. This year alone, the BLM planned to round up over 1,000 animals, about 60% of all the managed wild horses in the state.

Once removed, wild horses lose their special status. If a horse is adopted, the title doesn’t transfer to the owner for a year. If sold, a horse is private property immediately, and its welfare is no longer tracked. By policy, wild horses aren’t supposed to end up in kill pens or slaughterhouses, but it’s a known phenomenon.

“If an animal is found in a kill pen or somehow otherwise demonstrated to have been sold to slaughter, BLM will assess whether the purchaser violated federal law and refer documentation to law enforcement when appropriate,” wrote the BLM spokesperson.

The state of Colorado, through a wild horse working group established in 2023, has attempted to push what some consider a more humane solution: fertility darting.

A counterpoint to Barnes, TJ Holmes lives and breathes wild horses while cooperating with the BLM. For two decades, she’s been the main volunteer protecting and managing the Spring Basin herd of Disappointment Valley, a remote area of southwest Colorado. A self-described recovering journalist, she was drawn to wild horse advocacy after covering a helicopter roundup in the early 2000s. She asked a BLM employee at the time if there was another way to manage the horses, and he said there wasn’t.

“That question and that answer launched me into being a mustang advocate,” she said.

Holmes almost single-handedly administers one of the few successful fertility darting programs, which delivers a substance that is meant to make a mare temporarily unable to carry a foal. The herd of 75 has not had a roundup since 2011, and Holmes has a close and positive relationship with local BLM officials.

She attributes her success to the relatively small size of the herd and its limited rangeland. Holmes’ dedication helps too, said East.

“She knows every individual horse and every individual horse knows her,” he said.

Advocates on the management side say they are trying to keep as many mustangs on the land as possible. The Spring Basin herd, in Holmes’ estimation, is on the edge of continued genetic viability. To combat the problem, she has brought in mares from other Colorado herds to strengthen the gene pool.

“I’d rather introduce horses periodically rather than have a herd that the landscape can’t sustain,” she said.

Cindy Wright, who works with the Sand Wash Basin herd, said the only realistic path forward for wild horse advocates was cooperation with the other interests in Colorado’s public lands. She hoped emerging technologies, like horse-recognition software and autonomous fertility darting stations, might help volunteers and land managers strike a better balance.

“We have to figure out how to share the land,” she said.

Freedom

Barnes used to get into drag races in her California youth, and it shows as she barrels around the mesa top in a hatchback, checking on tanks left as watering holes. Her life with the horses has a circular causality: she was meant to be there because she believes she’s always been there, in a spiritual sense.

Even so, it’s not hard to see why Barnes gravitated toward the horses when she landed in the San Luis Valley. She hates any loss of her solitude and independence.

“They had what I wanted – freedom,” she said.

Whether someone takes up her mission, and whether that mission is worthy or feasible, is a question for the future. Driving along Colorado 159, one might still catch a glimpse of the twitching ears or swishing tails of the San Luis Valley’s most persistent outlaws.