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Ken Salazar, a fifth-generation Coloradan, was confirmed as the 50th Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior on Jan. 20, 2009 in a unanimous vote by the U.S. Senate. Prior to his confirmation, Salazar served as Colorado’s 35th U.S. Senator, winning election in November 2004 and serving on the Finance Committee, which oversees the nation’s tax, trade, social security, and health-care systems. He also served on the Agriculture, Energy and Natural Resources, Ethics, Veterans Affairs, and Aging Committees.

As a U.S. Senator, Salazar was a leader in creating and implementing a vision for a renewable-energy economy that is less dependent on foreign oil. He was involved in every major bipartisan legislative effort on energy since 2005, including helping craft the Renewable Fuels, Consumer Protection, and Energy Efficiency Act of 2007. Salazar also tackled the challenge of providing affordable health care by fighting to broaden the Children’s Health Insurance Program and by working to improve health care for older Americans.

Salazar has been a champion for farmers, ranchers, an

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After years of watching industry-friendly appointees of the Bush administration run roughshod over environmental concerns, conservationists had hoped Barack Obama’s election would bring a new day at the Department of the Interior. But the selection of Colorado Senator Ken Salazar left some on the left wondering what kind of interior secretary he will turn out to be.

Salazar was born March 2, 1955, in Alamosa, CO and grew up near the town of Manassa, CO. His parents, Emma and Henry (Enrique) Salazar, were Americans of Mexican descent whose relatives first settled in the American West when Mexico controlled the territory. After helping found the city of Santa Fe, NM, in 1598, they planted roots in Colorado’s San Luis Valley. Salazar’s great-grandfather, Felipe Cantu, was kidnapped by Indians in 1844 and given to a Spanish trader and his wife. By 1850, he had started the ranch, Los Rincones, which the family still owns today. Salazar’s parents served in World War II—his mother as a clerk-typist in the War Department in Washington DC, and h

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SALAZAR, John

With his election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2004, John Salazar became one of a handful of farmers serving in Congress. From his seat on the Agriculture Committee, Salazar used his experience as a seed-potato farmer and a state legislator to defend his district’s interests in agriculture and conservation. “There are only four, maybe six of us [farmers] here in Congress,” he said. “If we can’t stand up for farmers, we shouldn’t be here.”¹

John Salazar was born July 21, 1953, in Alamosa, Colorado, to Emma and Henry Salazar. A fifth-generation resident of the San Luis Valley, he was raised with his seven siblings on the 52-acre family ranch on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains. Salazar grew up poor—his family’s home did not have electricity until the 1980s—and he learned to love farming by working on his father’s alfalfa and potato farm. After three years at St. Francis Seminary in Cincinnati, Colorado, Salazar served four years in the U.S. Army. He went on to earn his business degree from Adams State College in Alamosa, Colorado, in 1981.²