Jicarilla Apache Nation — RoamSchoolFamily

Background

The Jicarilla Apache Nation's cultural center records that the aboriginal homelands of the Jicarilla Apache spanned four states, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas and the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas, over 50 million acres. The same page estimates 12,000 to 14,000 Jicarilla Apache lived on that land before Europeans arrived, and says the number dwindled to fewer than 1,000 between the 1600s and the 1800s through warfare and disease. The Jicarilla Apache Reservation was established in 1887 by an executive order signed by President Grover Cleveland. A second executive order signed by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907 established the southern portion, bringing the reservation to more than 875,000 acres in the upper reaches of the San Juan River basin and the Rio Chama in north central New Mexico. Dulce is the heart of the reservation and the seat of tribal headquarters. Mesa Verde names the Jicarilla Apache of northern New Mexico as one of the two Apache peoples that have traditionally used Mesa Verde as hunting and gathering land, and says Apache peoples traded across the region for hides, meat, horns, arrowheads and woven baskets. The Bureau of Indian Affairs lists the Nation by its full legal name, the Jicarilla Apache Nation, New Mexico.

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Visit and learn

Jicarilla Cultural Arts & Heritage Center

P.O. Box 507, Dulce, New Mexico 87528, on Highway 64·museum

The Nation's own heritage center, at the four-way stop on Highway 64 beside the Jicarilla Shopping Center in Dulce, with hours Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and weekend hours available by phone. Its forerunner, the Jicarilla Buckskin and Leather Craft Industry, opened as the Jicarilla Apache Arts & Crafts Museum in 1965 and took its present name in 2017. The center says it exists to preserve the Jicarilla cultural arts, employ tribal members, store historical museum items and educate visitors, and it employs 11 artisans producing basketry, beadwork, micaceous pottery, moccasins and sewn clothing.

https://jicarilla-culturalart.org/

Tribal lands have their own laws. Check the nation's site before you visit.

Parks on its homelands

Dunes rising behind Medano Creek with Cleveland Peak of the Sangre de Cristo range above in spring.

Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve

The dunefield is Seinanyédi in Jicarilla Apache, "it goes up and down." Source

Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling in North America, set in a sandstone alcove with multistory masonry rooms and round kivas.

Mesa Verde National Park

NPS names the Jicarilla Apache of northern New Mexico as one of the two Apache tribes that used Mesa Verde as hunting and gathering land. The tribe operates the Jicarilla Arts and Crafts Museum, and Apache peoples traded across this region for hides, meat, horns, arrowheads, and woven baskets. Source

Sources

Checked September 2026.

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