Bandelier National Monument

Bandelier's signature landscape is Frijoles Canyon, cut into the ash of the Valles Caldera's eruption 1.14 million years ago. Into the soft tuff, people of the Ancestral Puebloan tradition carved cave rooms and built multi-story masonry dwellings. Tyuonyi, a circular pueblo that stood one to three stories, anchors the canyon floor, with Long House built along the cliff wall and tree-ring dates from ceiling beams falling between 1383 and 1466. Scholars connect the canyon's fifteenth-century population peak to the wider migration out of the Four Corners region during the Pueblo III drought era, and the pueblo was abandoned by about 1600 as people moved to Rio Grande pueblos such as Cochiti and San Ildefonso, which remain occupied today. A 1.2-mile paved Main Loop Trail reaches the core sites, and a longer trail climbs 140 feet by ladder to Alcove House, a shelter cave holding a reconstructed kiva.

The monument was named for Swiss-American anthropologist Adolph Bandelier, who visited in 1880 at the invitation of Pueblo guide Jose Montoya and called the cliff dwellings the grandest thing I ever saw. President Woodrow Wilson designated it in 1916. CCC crews built the park's 1930s infrastructure, now a National Historic Landmark district, and during World War II the lodge housed personnel working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. The National Park Service manages the site in cooperation with surrounding pueblos, and over 70 percent of the monument is designated wilderness.

Visiting

The National Park Service operates the monument: open dawn to dusk daily except Christmas Day and severe-weather closures. Fees: $25 private vehicle, $20 motorcycle, $15 per person on foot or bicycle (16 and older); all passes valid 7 days and include Tsankawi; the park is cashless. Visitor center 9 to 5 year-round, 8 to 6 from Memorial Day through Labor Day. The main entrance road and parking are limited; NPS operates a seasonal shuttle from White Rock, so check current conditions.

Photo: [Larry Lamsa, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bandelier_(31629997483).jpg)