At This New Mexico Park, Mountain Bikers Pedal Amid Hundreds of Oil Wells

The Glade Run Recreation Area on the outskirts of Farmington, New Mexico hosts cattle, ATVs, dirt bikes, hikers, birders, runners and mountain bikers.

“It’s a free-for-all,” said Mike Eisenfeld, the energy and climate program manager for San Juan Citizens Alliance, “but kind of fun.” Case in point: This year marks the 45th running of the Road Apple Rally, a mountain bike race through the recreation area that lured Eisenfeld to Farmington in the first place.

About 88,900 people visited the area in 2025, according to the Bureau of Land Management, which manages most of the area. But surprises await visitors amid the juniper and piñon trees. 

“When I moved here 30 years ago, you would go to the Bureau of Land Management and ask them about [Glade Run], they’d tell you about the trails,” Eisenfeld said. “But you didn’t know that within that 50-square-mile recreation area that there’s 500 oil and gas wells.”

The trails and dirt roads that draw hikers, bikers and ATVs also connect the wells, many of which are only lightly fenced off. 

“We are kind of used to our trails weaving through the oil and gas infrastructure,” Eisenfeld said. Even so, “Some of these sites have some pretty dangerous elements to them … that can include things like emissions exposure to benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene, xylene.” All of those chemicals are toxic compounds tied to oil and gas production. He also recounted a story of a young girl who, he said, died when she tried to ride a pumpjack.

Eisenfeld said he and others have asked the Bureau of Land Management to be more forthcoming about the oil and gas operations within the recreation area, so the public can be aware of the emissions and other dangers. 

The recreation area sits in the middle of the San Juan Basin, a large oil and gas field that stretches across northwest New Mexico and up into Colorado. While fossil fuel production has been a major employer and economic driver in the basin for the past century, a recent report from the Bureau of Land Management said that its gas production is in a terminal decline and that after a short bump, oil production will begin to drop as well. 

Work plugging old wells and reclaiming the surrounding land is a constant throughout the basin.

“I’m hoping that there could be a robust reclamation economy that allows Farmington to prosper to some extent,” Eisenfeld said. “Up here in this area, there’s a vast need for an economy based on cleaning this place up.”

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