In New Mexico’s Bootheel, the Continental Divide Trail’s southern terminus has shifted from quiet hiker country to a construction and security zone, after the Interior secretary transferred 110,000 acres to the U.S. Army and labeled it a National Defense Area.
For years, hikers coming off the mountains that stitch the Continental Divide Trail toward the border have described a feeling of arrival at the “Crazy Cook” monument—an end point that still carries the hush of remote desert land.
This year, Teresa Martinez says that sense is gone.
“Maybe I’d see a Border Patrol truck, a rancher and a couple of cows,” said Martinez, co-founder and executive director of the Continental Divide Trail Coalition, a national nonprofit that helps steward the trail. Now, she said, it’s a “construction zone.”
The Gila National Forest in New Mexico is where the Continental Divide Trail passes before reaching its terminus at the border. In the months when the Trump administration’s border wall buildout accelerated. the landscape near that terminus has been transformed into an active security and construction perimeter.
Almost exactly a year earlier. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum transferred 110. 000 acres of federal land from the Bureau of Land Management in New Mexico into the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army. Burgum said the emergency measure was spurred by a need “to secure the border and protect the nation’s resources.” The transfer included land in three counties and involved the famed southern terminus of the Continental Divide Trail—a 3. 100-mile long-distance trail that stretches from Canada to Mexico and snakes along mountains that create a natural boundary between river systems.
The move was also tied to the administration’s signature promise from Donald Trump’s first and second terms: constructing a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico to stem the flow of undocumented immigrants. This latest iteration of the project—meant to add hundreds of new miles of fencing and surveillance—has been funded by the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill. described as a medley of tax cuts. revocations of green energy subsidies. and infusions of funding for border enforcement.
For Martinez, the question isn’t whether the land is used—it’s what gets lost once it’s militarized.
“In my mind, to apply for the permit would be to condone the creation of the NDA,” Martinez said, referencing the National Defense Area designation created as part of the Army transfer.
That transfer included the border region being designated as a National Defense Area (NDA). a temporary zone under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense. The Trump administration wants to rename the Department of Defense the Department of War. and the NDA is managed locally by Fort Huachuca. a U.S. Army base 150 miles west of New Mexico in Arizona.
More than a mile of the trail sits within the bounds of this controlled perimeter.
In the months after the NDA was created, all international hikers were prohibited from entering it. Later, rules eased to allow hikers to apply for authorization from Fort Huachuca and be escorted by qualified government personnel. American citizens also had to apply for authorization from the fort and undergo a background check. and without permission. hikers could face federal trespassing charges.
By Martinez’s count, thru-hiking for all hikers was down by as much as 20 percent last year.
The construction changes came on top of the access restrictions. Martinez said a nearby hill that once provided dirt for concrete mixed onsite is now completely eroded. Dust from constant traffic has created massive swirling clouds. and jackhammers now rumble through a landscape that hikers once experienced as quiet and largely undisturbed.
Along the trail, crews have installed the steel that has become emblematic of the border in the last decade. Diamond-shaped stainless-steel slats—sections of the impermeable bollard fencing—recently greeted hikers near Crazy Cook, where the trail either begins or ends depending on direction.
Within days, roaring equipment heaved fencing vertically into place.
The timeline has been hard for hikers to follow. Last June. thru-hiker Leslie Boyd set out southbound on the Continental Divide Trail at a time when confusion about the NDA was at its peak. It wasn’t until September—more than halfway into a 144-day trip—that Boyd said the application process and what it entailed became clear.
“This Bootheel border wall project is the absolute definition of waste.”
Boyd said. “In my mind. to apply for the permit would be to condone the creation of the NDA. and I do not condone the establishment of the NDA.” Ultimately. Boyd and a small group of other hikers decided against applying. They reached the border by way of a small sliver of New Mexico’s state trust land where the federal trespassing laws did not apply.
Days after the hike ended. the group wrote in an Instagram post that the repercussions would be simple: “Simply that I would not touch the terminus monument at Crazy Cook and take the iconic ‘monument photo.’” Instead. they ended their expedition in a less traditional way. standing together next to a barbed wire fence.
Today, uncertainty remains high. Two parallel barriers are slated for construction at the trailhead and monument. and both will have to move some 200 feet to accommodate the work. Customs and Border Protection could also temporarily limit all access to the trail for “safety reasons. ” an agency spokesperson wrote by email. without specifying what those reasons might be.
While hikers try to plan around shifting rules, towns nearby are being reshaped by the arrival of construction crews. Hundreds of workers have arrived in the region. transforming small towns like Hachita—described as a sleepy community of fewer than 20 residents with a church. a post office. and a single gas station—into rapidly growing man camps.
The changes are happening in an area where the consequences of border policy can be fatal. Borderlands are inherently political zones with life-threatening perils. In 2022. the United Nations estimated that nearly half of all deaths on the U.S.-Mexico border were of immigrants attempting to enter the country through the Chihuahuan or nearby Sonoran deserts—dry. forbidding regions where temperatures often exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer.
Figures on enforcement in the wider region suggest fewer apprehensions for New Mexico and nearby areas. but the numbers available for the Bootheel are limited. From 2025 to 2026. the number of undocumented immigrants apprehended by the Border Patrol was down by 80 percent for all of New Mexico and two counties in Texas. though Customs and Border Protection declined to provide exact statistics for detentions in the Bootheel region. In almost the same period, the U.S. Army made 24 temporary detentions in New Mexico, according to an agency spokesperson.
When Burgum announced the land transfer last year. he invoked an emergency withdrawal defined in the Federal Register as “extraordinary measures” undertaken to “preserve values that would otherwise be lost.” The Trump administration invoked the same provision in 2019—using it to withdraw smaller chunks of land and transfer them to the Army for similar preservation aims.
According to Burgum’s order, the Army would “prevent unauthorized human activity in ecologically sensitive areas along the southern border, which can be harmed by repeated foot traffic, unregulated vehicle use, and the creation of informal trails or camps.”
Critics argue the real impact is the opposite. Constructing a border wall here would, they say, be more destructive—and expensive. In January. Congressman Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.) said. “This Bootheel border wall project is the absolute definition of waste and will do nothing to make our country safer.”.
Martinez describes the change in terms that go beyond the physical damage. “What has been lost, we’ll never get back,” she said. “In all the ways, physical, metaphysical, emotional, spiritual, cultural. We will never get it back. That is what I mourn.”
Continental Divide Trail Gila National Forest Crazy Cook border wall National Defense Area Fort Huachuca Doug Burgum U.S. Army Customs and Border Protection Department of Homeland Security Gabe Vasquez New Mexico Bootheel Teresa Martinez Leslie Boyd