Barack Obama’s nominee for Interior Secretary, Senator Ken Salazar of Colorado, says he has some unfinished business to take care of before he leaves the Senate and takes the helm at the Interior Department. One of the bills would define bans on mining, timber harvesting and new roads and constructions in Rocky Mountain National Park. Others would establish the Sangre de Cristo National Heritage Area, South Park National Heritage Area, and the Baca National Wildlife Refuge Management.

photo NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images

Cowboy hat and all, Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar stood beside President-elect Barack Obama at a Chicago press conference Wednesday and accepted the nomination to head the Interior Department. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., often opened his meetings in the San Luis Valley by referring to the area as "my valley." Should the senator be confirmed as the next secretary of the Interior, those sentiments will take on a whole new meaning since the department oversees just under 800,000 acres of public land in the valley.
The man whose family was among the first to work the land in the San Luis Valley has been tabbed to be the steward of nearly one-fifth of the country's land mass.

As a result, Democrats and Republicans alike have been all over the map as to whom they think Gov. Bill Ritter will name to replace the San Luis Valley native. While few people would say on the record who their choices are, names that have been mentioned included U.S. Rep. John Salazar, Ken's brother.

photo courtesy Associated Press

President-Elect, Barak Obama, a Democrat, nominated Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado as secretary of the interior—someone Obama sees as a "guardian of the American Landscape". The Sierra Club's executive director, Carl Pope, said in a statement Wednesday that “as a Westerner and a rancher, [Mr. Salazar] understands the value of our public lands, parks, and wildlife and has been a vocal critic of the Bush administration's reckless efforts to sell off our public lands to Big Oil and other special interests.”

Whenever reporters wanted to talk this week to Colorado Rep. John Salazar about his potential nomination to head the Agriculture Department, the San Luis Valley potato farmer remained behind closed doors. Salazar, 55, ended all the suspense Thursday by announcing he'd gotten the job he'd really been chasing for six months - an open seat on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, which oversees the federal budget, making the actual dollar decisions for every government agency. Appropriations gets its power from the fact that it writes the federal budget and has the most say over spending for all government agencies. Colorado has had a voice on the Senate Appropriations Committee in Sen. Wayne Allard. However, the Republican is retiring from Congress and his successor, Sen.-elect Mark Udall, will be low on the seniority ladder there. So having Rep. Salazar on House Appropriations is both a feather in his cap and an important voice for Colorado [and the San Luis Valley]. Salazar isn't quite taking his name out of consideration for President-elect Barack Obama's Cabinet, but he said Thursday that a powerful new committee seat makes him want to stay in Congress "as long as the people of the 3rd (District) will continue to have me." Securing the seat, however, appears to indicate that Salazar is no longer in the running for agriculture secretary in the Obama administration.

Representatives of charitable foundations and other funding agencies from Colorado gathered Sunday evening at El Rancho Salazar, near Manassa, for a reception and dinner to kick-off Rural Philanthropy Days for the San Luis Valley.

La Capilla de San Francisco de Asis, was once located in Cerritos, a small village named for the various small hills that surrounded it near the town of Manassa and the village of Los Rincones. It was constructed in 1927 of adobe and considered at the time to be of excessive proportions and was very expensive to build. The church was blessed during the Fiesta de San Francisco in 1928 and measured 80'x30'. The building was destroyed in a fire in the late 1950's and was subsequently torn down.

Prior to the construction of this building existed an earlier church which was blessed on November 1879 and measured 50'X28' and constructed on 20 square yards of land donated by a gentleman named Victor García y Madril. The organization Las Hijas de Maria was founded there on November 20th, 1889 and the insignia was blessed on May 1895. The organization Señoras del Altar was flourishing in Cerritos at that time as well. In May 1905 the church had acquired an altar, which for many years was in the parroquial church, which was inaugurated in September 1905. The cemetery associated with the original church, originally measuring 20 square yards and located on a hill in Cerritos, which was located on state property, can still be visited today.

photos courtesy of Gloria Salazar Richhart.

View larger image of exterior and interior.