The Sangre De Cristo mountain range runs from Santa Fe, New Mexico up to the Arkansas River Valley in Colorado. One of its features is the world’s tallest Aspen trees – located in huge groves near the Santa Fe Ski Basin. I used to work as a wilderness ranger in those mountains.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mhill110/1516037701/
The Aspen groves are the result of massive forest fires which occurred during the 1890s. This was one of them.
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Nature determined the best plants for that region and needed to remove those that grew under different climate conditions. This effect is seen in many geological records.