Bandelier National Monument

It was another beautiful day in Northern New Mexico even if the wind is trying to exert itself again.  But still, it was a great day to visit Bandelier National Monument named for Adolph Bandelier, archeologist and historian.

Canyon wall with cliff dwelling entrances

Bandelier was the home of Ancestral Pueblo people from about 600 AD until about 1600.  These ancient people were farmers initially living in very small groups scattered about the area.  As time passed the small groups came together into ever larger groups until by the 1200s small villages existed with pueblos as large as 40 rooms.  As the populations grew, so did the villages.  The Bandelier villages of Tyuonyi and Tsankawi located in Frijoles Canyon had pueblos of several hundred rooms as well as many living in the adjacent caves along the base of the canyon walls.  By the late 1500s, these Pueblo Indians began to move to other locations along the Rio Grande River.

Big Kiva

Today, the National Park Service strives to protect what is left of these ancient villages, both the remains of the pueblos and the cave dwellings. On our visit today we were able to see the ruins of the Tyuonyi pueblo and several caves.  The canyon wall for a length of perhaps a half mile exhibited petroglyphs.  These images carved into the stone by ancient peoples are not nearly as distinct as those we saw at Big Bend.  Most were so faint we could have missed them altogether had we not just stopped, sat on a park bench, and searched the wall.

Ruin of a Pueblo

The geology here is the result of 2 major volcanic eruptions over a million years ago.  Although the canyon walls look similar to limestone, they are actually compressed volcanic ash (called tuff) which is relatively fragile and easily eroded.  Wind and rain gouged out “rooms” in the cliff which eventually became the homes of Ancestral Pueblo people.  They smoked these rooms to make them more resistant to erosion and even applied a type of plaster to the walls.  Pretty remarkable.

The National Park System has several units preserving Cliff Dwellings.  All that we have visited have been worthwhile.  Perhaps the best that we have seen so far is Mesa Verde in southern Colorado.