Strong winds drove the largest U.S. wildfire toward a New Mexico ski resort and the 1,000-year-old community of Taos on Wednesday.
As people evacuated, flames raced through parched forests and firefighters tried to protect homes from a blaze that has burned a 45-mile long path up the Sangre de Cristo mountains in just over a month.
In immediate danger was the village of Chacon where villagers stayed to defend homes that have been in their families since Spanish-Mexican land grants of the 1820s when the area was not yet part of the United States.Northern New Mexico is caught in its worst drought in at least 500 years. Climate change has reduced snowpacks and dried out high-mountain forests and valleys, according to scientists.
The so-called Hermits Peak Calf Canyon fire has destroyed forests and watersheds used by Indo-Hispano farmers and ranching villages that have relied on them for centuries for logging, firewood and irrigation.
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