We got up early this morning for the 3.5 hour drive to Gila Cliff Dwelling National Monument in western New Mexico. Its really not that far from where we are parked in Las Cruces, but the roads to the NM, through Gila National Forest, are narrow, twisty, windy, steep mountain roads. We went in through Silver City on the Mountain Trail National Scenic Byway and returned through Hatch via Geronimo Trail National Scenic Byway which connected to New Mexico Back Country Scenic Byway. The road to Hannah in Hawaii has nothing on these roads and the scenery was pretty awesome! We stopped at the Visitor Center, collected our 25thPark Passport Stamp, viewed the exhibits and watched the Park movie. We then drove to the trailhead.
The mountains around the monument were formed by two super volcanoes that blew 28 to 30 million years ago. The rock formations are a combination of soft volcanic tuft and harder lava flows. The cliff dwellings were built by the Mogollen Puebloan Indians between 1276 and 1287 based on treee ring dating of the wood used in the buildings. They did not stay long. Scientist believe the Mogollens had moved on by 1300. The Cliff Dwellings were made a NM by President Roosevelt in 1907 but by then the caves had already been looted of most of their archilogical treasures. There are 40 rooms with many of them accessible from the trails. We left Etta in the supplied dog kennels and hiked the Cliff Dwellings Trail (1 mile) and explored the ruins for about an hour. We looked for, but did not see any, Pictographs that were supposed to be in the main room. But we saw lots of grafitti from the early days of the NM. The only critter sighting was a lizard from the trail.
This used to be the hardest National Monument in the country to reach. In the 1910/20s they had to organize caravans of automobiles over dirt roads to help folks reach the NM due to its remoteness and rugged road conditions.
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| Entrance Sign |
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| Cliff Dwellings from the lower trail |
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| Cave 2 Dwellings |
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| Leslie in the main cave |
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| Main room |
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| Lower walkway |
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| The exit ladder |
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| View from Emory Overlook |
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