Couple Run Unique Tourist Attraction : Frozen Volcano Still a Hot Item to Owners

Less than 1,000 years ago, a river of fiery lava destroyed the livelihood of Indians in western New Mexico. For the last 38 years, a couple have eked out a living from what was left behind.

David and Reddy Candelaria run a tourist attraction and trading post in the shadow of Bandera Crater, a dormant volcano that once buried the land in lava and cinder. What they sell to tourists are the wonders that the volcano produced: a cave filled with pale green ice year-around, craggy lava formations and the crater itself.

“I call myself the man who owns a volcano,” Candelaria said. “There aren’t many people who can say that.”

At the age when many are planning retirement, the Candelarias finally are reaping the rewards of nearly four decades of hardship and isolation.

In the last few years, Candelaria, 62, has begun attending tourism trade shows armed with enlarged photos of his attractions and brochures glowingly describing what he has to offer.

“I think this is as good an attraction as there is in the state,” Candelaria said. “But I’ve had a devil of a time over the years telling people that we’re here.”

The site straddles the Continental Divide about 25 miles southwest of Grants on the edge of El Malpais, a vast area of chaotically jumbled lava rock dotted by craters and cinder cones.

El Malpais, which is Spanish for the badlands, was formed in the last 3,000 years by four lava flows that poured across a large valley.

An Interior Department brochure about the area reads: “Based upon archeological evidence, the most recent flows have been dated as less than 1,000 years in age, and Indian legends talk about a river of fire covering fields their ancestors tilled.”

In many places in the region, tubes formed when lava hardened above streams of still-flowing lava.

The ice cave at the Candelarias’ attraction is such a formation. Its floor is covered by a solid slab of ice, and the shadowy back of the hole is covered by an ice wall.

Visitors descend about 70 wooden steps into the cave. Toward the bottom, the steps are paralleled by a flow that resembles a frozen wave. The ice is pale green because of an algae that survives even in subfreezing temperatures.

Candelaria said the temperature in the cave never rises above freezing, even when summer temperatures reach the 80s.

He said the ice was formed as water seeped through the porous lava rock above. The temperatures never warm because colder air also seeps down through the rock.

“It’s a natural ice box,” Candelaria said. “Indians used it for a water supply. The old homesteaders used to come up in wagons and make ice cream and have picnics.”

The log building that houses the Candelarias’ home and trading post was built near the ice cave as a dance hall.

It was built by Cecil Moore, who leased the land from Candelaria’s grandmother. Candelaria moved to the site after World War II.

“I found this place, and I just quit college,” he said. “I didn’t know anything about it. There were no roads, no electricity, no water. We had to haul water for years. . . . It’s been rough.”

20-Year Battle

For 20 years, Candelaria fought to get modern conveniences to the remote area.

When he took over the place, the trip from Grants took an hour over a rough trail, he said. “It took us 20 years to get that road paved,” Candelaria added.

It took about the same length of time to get electricity to their home and another 10 years to get a telephone that works only part of the time, he said.

But living at the remote resort has had its benefits too.

The Candelarias visited the White House to give former President Richard M. Nixon a Navajo rug bearing the presidential seal. They received a presidential plaque in exchange.

The late film director Sam Peckinpah and actor James Coburn have visited the site, Candelaria said. Mrs. Candelaria led the late David Janssen on a tour of the lava fields during the days when he starred in “The Fugitive” television series.

“I kept thinking he looked like someone I ought to know,” she said. “He took off running across some of the lava, and then I knew who he was.”

Thousands Visit

Candelaria estimates that 15,000 to 25,000 persons a year visit the attraction, though he doesn’t keep an exact count. He said some tourists just visit the trading post, forgoing the short hikes to the ice cave or to the top of the crater.

Since he began advertising in earnest a couple of years ago, those visits have increased 30%, Candelaria said. Although much of the revenue goes back into the business, the couple said they managed to squirrel away enough to go on a cruise recently.

But, though business is good, Candelaria said he often finds himself thinking about what will happen to the area when age finally catches up. The couple’s three daughters are married and live elsewhere.

“That’s their lives, and that’s fine, but we’re the only ones left,” he said.

Candelaria said he fought attempts in the 1960s to make the area part of U.S. Park Service lands “because it was our heritage. Now, who knows? If they could come up with a decent price, I might want to talk about it.”

He said other plans to make his land a Bureau of Land Management wilderness area have been halted by bureaucratic snarls.

“It’s nothing off my back one way or the other,” he said. “We like it here. We enjoy it.”