Cut into the forested mesas of the Pajarito Plateau, 35 miles northwest of Santa Fe, the cliff dwellings and Ancestral Puebloan ruins of BANDELIER NATIONAL MONUMENT ($10 per vehicle) are spread across fifty square miles of pine woods and deep stream-cut gorges. Named after archeologist Adolph Bandelier, who publicized the place in the 1880s, they date from around 1300 AD, at the very end of the Ancestral Puebloan period. Various itinerant groups, seeking sanctuary from drought and invasion, gathered here to build a community that amalgamated their assorted cultures. At the end of the narrow switchbacking road down from Hwy-4, the visitor center provides an excellent overview of the site (summer daily 8am-6pm; rest of year daily 8am-5pm; tel 505/672-0343, ).

The first stop along the paved 1.5-mile trail beyond, looping through Frijoles Canyon , is Tyuonyi , a circular, multistory village of which only the ground floor and foundations survive. A side path leads up to dozens of cave dwellings , their rounded chambers scooped out of the soft volcanic rock; you can scramble up to, and even enter, some of them, to peer out across the valley. The main trail continues to the Long House , an 800ft series of two- and three-story houses built side by side against the canyon wall. Though most of the upper stories have collapsed, you can still see the holes that held the roof beams, and the rows of petroglyphs carved above them. Half a mile beyond that, protected by a rock overhang 150ft above the canyon floor, a reconstructed kiva sits in Ceremonial Cave . To reach it you have to climb a succession of rickety ladders and steep stairs cut into the crumbly rock.

Bandelier National Monument

• Bandelier National Monument
• The Ancestral Puebloans

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