Border Sanctuary: The Conservation Legacy of the Santa Ana Land Grant by M. J. Morgan (review)

In Border Sanctuary: The Conservation Legacy of the Santa Ana Land Grant, M. J. Morgan traces the hidden history of the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge: “hidden” because almost no human impressions of this former Mexican land grant survive from before the 1940s. Morgan uses numerous techniques ranging from interrogating scientific sources to contextualizing the region’s history within Spaniards’ observations of South Texas in order to narrate the history of a rare riparian habitat and generations of its Indian, Spanish, Mexican, Tejano, and Anglo-American inhabitants. Connections between human inhabitants and the natural environment thus reveal new insights into South Texas borderlands history.

Morgan begins her narrative by discussing the acquisition of the Santa Ana refuge by the U.S. government in 1943, an event celebrated by members of the Rio Grande Valley Nature Club. Birders and conservationists had noted three threats to the Santa Ana forest during the 1930s: bird hunters, two destructive hurricane seasons, and federal flood control measures that might rob the dry land of its life-giving water. Thus did the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge enter recorded history. In chapter 2, Morgan reimagines the region’s landscape during the precontact era by utilizing scientific and historical sources to describe the forest’s three environments: a riparian forest that hugged the Rio Grande; river-formed, curving lakes known as resacas; and the flowing grasslands that stretched northward on the South Texas plains. During the Spanish period, settlers from the village of Reynosa hunted in and around the Santa Ana environment, while domestic animals such as sheep and cattle flourished in the bountiful forests and surrounding grasslands. In chapter 4, Morgan reconstructs the story of Benigno Leal and his family; Leal received a grant for the southern portions of what later became the wildlife refuge, ranching on the grant with members of his family while also dealing, undoubtedly, with fears of the ever-common Indian raids that decimated Mexico’s northern borderlands during the mid-nineteenth century. In chapter 5, Morgan examines the Santa Ana itself during the mid-nineteenth century, arguing that although animals—such as jaguars and wild horses—“changed more of the environment than people did,” ranchers and Anglo land buyers introduced themselves into the landscape to greater degrees than previously (p. 83). From then until the end of the century, lightning strikes, armadillos, and cattle grazing changed the landscape, but the stewardship of ranchers such as Amado Guzmán ensured the Santa Ana’s survival. Finally, in chapter 7, the book ends on a something of a sour note: the Leals sold their ranch by the early twentieth century, during a time when farmers and land-development companies promoted irrigation and commercial agriculture, bringing an end, conversely, to the lower Rio Grande Valley’s long-established cattle industry. Nevertheless, the Santa Ana refuge survived to be enjoyed by conservationists and wildlife enthusiasts alike.

Border Sanctuaryoffers a unique contribution to South Texas borderlands historiography, not only through Morgan’s expert usage of the limited available sources, but also in her sensitive portrayal of people’s relationship to this rich landscape, perhaps most importantly prior to the twentieth century. Morgan is certainly correct when she argues that “Borderlands history has been strongly social history; until recently, it has not included much work in environmental or natural history, except for masterful studies of Hispanic and Tejano land tenure” (p. 6). The richness of an albeit limited strip of land is on full display in Border Sanctuary. Morgan certainly leads the way in indicating that people’s stewardship of land—not to mention the natural history of land itself—is only beginning to be understood in the exciting field of borderlands history.