The Valles Caldera has had an unusual history that has given it a unique position among United States national parks. After a long pre-history of occupation by ancestral Puebloans and later Spanish settlers, the caldera and the surrounding Jemez Mountains passed into United States control after the Mexican-American War. At this time it wasn't viewed as particularly significant: a remote, if scenic, area of what seemed to be grazing land within a newly-acquired territory, of little commercial interest to anyone but the old Spanish families that had already settled and pastured livestock there, sometimes in the face of considerable hostility from nearby Indian populations. Consequently, when a bill was passed in the United States Congress in 1860 to compensate the Baca family, a pioneering family in New Mexico with significant land holdings, for the federalization of some of their land, a large tract of land in the Jemez, including most of the caldera, was handed over to the Bacas, along with some other tracts elsewhere in the Southwest. This tract became known as "Baca Location No. 1" and would retain this name long after the Baca family sold it to other investors. The Baca Location changed hands a few times in the 19th and 20th centuries before winding up in the hands of James P. (Pat) Dunigan, a wealthy Texan who had a good sense for the history and aesthetics of the property. Dunigan was horrified by the environmental damage inflicted on his property by prior holders of the timber rights. He therefore bought out the holders of those rights, and placed most of the Baca

Location off limits to development while he negotiated with the United States government to sell the land back to the government under terms that guaranteed its preservation in perpetuity. The negotiations literally took decades, but finally, in 1999, Congress authorized the acquisition of the Baca Location from Dunigan's heirs, as he had died by this time. The terms of the acquisition called for the resulting "Valles Caldera National Preserve" (VCNP) to differ from practically any other national park land in the United States, in two related senses. First, in recognition of not only the history of the Baca Location but also the fact that the grazing there is economically significant to the region (which cannot exactly be called wealthy), Congress decreed that the Preserve would continue to function as a working ranch, and that it would eventually become self-sustaining through the revenues thus generated, even as resources for public recreational use came on-line. Second, and as a result, management of the VCNP would be done via a "trust" that includes representatives of not only the agencies that contributed land to the Preserve but also members of nearby communities. These factors together explain why visitor facilities have been slow in developing.