Valles Caldera Valles Caldera dates back to the prehistoric times: spear points dating to 11,000 years ago have been discovered. Several Native American tribes frequented the caldera, often seasonally for hunting and for obsidian, used for spear and arrow points. Obsidian from the caldera was traded by tribes across much of the Southwest. Eventually, Spanish and later Mexican settlers as well as the Navajo and other tribes came to the caldera seasonally for grazing with periodic clashes and raids. Later as the United States acquired New Mexico as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, the caldera became the backdrop
Jerry Garcia encouraged Garcia in his drawing and painting skills. Hedrick also introduced Garcia to the fiction of Jack Kerouac, whom Garcia later cited as a major influence. In June of the same year, Garcia graduated from the local Menlo Oaks school. He then moved with his family back to San Francisco, where they lived in an apartment above the newly built bar, the old one having previously been torn down to make way for a freeway entrance. Two months later, on Garcia's fifteenth birthday, his mother bought an accordion for him, to his great disappointment. Garcia had long been captivated by