Bandelier National Monument: A Beautiful Walk through History

Last week my hiking buddies and I went to Bandelier National Monument, and got not only a beautiful hike, but a lesson in New Mexico history.

Bandelier is a 33,677-acre site in Frijoles Canyon. It is near Los Alamos on the Pajarito Plateau.  Over 70% of the 50 square miles of the monument is wilderness, with only 3 miles of road and more than 70 miles of hiking trails. The whole area is dotted with the remains of ancient villages.

Bandelier was designated a national monument by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916. It was named for Adolph Bandelier, a Swiss-American anthropologist and archaeologist who spent eight years among the Pueblo tribes of New Mexico. Bandelier researched the cultures of the area before he wrote The Delight Makers, a novel set within the prehistoric Indian culture of the Southwest. In October of 1880, a man from the Cochiti Pueblo named Jose Montoya brought Adolph Bandelier to the area and Bandelier proclaimed the cliff dwellings "the grandest thing I ever saw." Recognizing the importance of its heritage, the National Park Service cooperates with surrounding Pueblos, other federal agencies, and state agencies to manage the park.

The first site that we came to was Tyuonyi (Que-weh-nee), a circular pueblo site that once stood up to three stories tall. Tree-ring dating of fragments of ceiling beams recovered from various rooms show that site dates from 1383 and 1466, during what is called the Pueblo IV Era. Other parts of the structure suggest that building may have begun around 1150, in what is called the Pueblo III Era.

The Pueblo III Era appears to have been a tumultuous time for the indigenous population. During this period, deep drought, environmental stress, and social unrest caused a wide-scale migration of Ancestral Puebloans away from the Four Corners area. Many of those migrants may have moved into Frijoles Canyon. Archaeological surveys of the area have found thousands of individual sites, but they were not all occupied at the same time. During the Classic Period, defined as AD 1325 to 1550, the population may have peaked. Most pueblos from this period have between 150 and 500 rooms each, with the largest containing approximately 1,500 rooms. This suggests a large population, though a specific total number of residents for the entire monument is not officially cited in any of the literature I found.

Near Tyounyi is the Long House. Built along the base of the cliff, these structures were 3 to 4 stories tall and supported by the walls of the canyon. The foundations of rock walls delineate the lower floors, while beam holes and cavates, the term for rooms artificially hollowed out of tuff, the soft volcanic rock, form the upper floors.

After that, we walked another half a mile to the Alcove House.  Formerly
known as Ceremonial Cave, this cave sits 140 feet above the floor of Frijoles Canyon and is accessed by 4 wooden ladders and a number of stone stairs. Archaeologists believe that approximately 25 Ancestral Pueblo people lived with Alcove House. There is a reconstructed kiva on the site, and viga holes and niches that suggest where the homes were. I cannot imagine what it would have been like to climb these ladders while carrying water from the stream below.

That is yours truly in the navy shirt and white cap. I am terribly afraid of heights and really proud of myself for making it both up to the top and down again. I cannot tell you which was harder!
 

Farther up the canyon, we spied ladders dug into the cliff walls and conjectured that they led to other places that may have been inhabited.

Bandelier was abandoned by 1600, when its inhabitants relocated to Cochiti, San Ildefonso, and other pueblos near the Rio Grande. These pueblos remain occupied. 

 

In addition to showcasing ancient structures, the park is famous for the park headquarters and visitor center, buildings that were built in the 1930s by crews of the Civilian Conservation Corps. There is a museum, a gift shop, and a café included in these buildings.

For more information about visiting Bandelier, click here. 

The Gila Catwalk; A scenic walk through history

 

Last month, I went with a couple of friends and my husband to do some exploring in Southern New Mexico. One of the places we visited is called "The Catwalk.” This place may be a popular tourist attraction now, but 120 years ago, it was all business, and that business was mining.

The Catwalk National Recreation Trail is located within the Gila National Forest. It is situated near the small town of Glenwood, approximately 65 miles northwest of Silver City. To get there, turn east off U.S. Highway 180 onto NM-174, which is also called Catwalk Road, and drive roughly 5 miles to the trailhead parking lot. Catwalk road crosses the stream, and while the water was very low when we went, it may be flooded and impassable during heavy rain or spring runoff.

The Catwalk goes into Whitewater Canyon, which contained a large number of very productive mines, including the Confidence. Because of the cost of moving the heavy ore, it was preferable to process gold and silver ores as close to the mines as possible. However, Whitewater Canyon was too narrow to permit processing.

In 1893, John T. Graham established an ore-processing facility at the entrance to Whitewater Canyon to help serve those mines. A small town grew up around the mill. Sometimes it is known as Graham after its founder, and sometimes it is called Whitewater after its location. The town quickly grew to have 200 residents, one of which, William Antrim, the town blacksmith, was Billy the Kid’s stepfather. Whitewater Canyon was a favorite hideout of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch, and of Apaches, including Geronimo.


However, the mill’s steam generators needed a good, steady supply of water. A water pipe, four inches in diameter, was constructed between Graham and the high mountain waters to make sure the generators and the town would be supplied. The pipe was encased in a wooden sheathe that was packed in sawdust to prevent freezing. By 1897, the town and mill’s needs had increased so much that an eighteen-inch pipe was constructed parallel to the original, four-inch line. In what was considered quite an engineering feat for the time, holes were drilled into the canyon walls to help brace the pipes, which ran some twenty feet above the canyon floor, and because the whole line needed monitoring and repair, a catwalk—a narrow walkway—ran the whole length of the pipe.

Beleaguered by profitability, water issues, and flooding, the mill never made the huge profits that Graham had hoped for. By 1904, the population had dropped low enough that the post office closed. The mill itself closed in 1913, and the town faded away

soon after that. All that remains of the mill now are some foundations and a few walls that blend into the canyon just above the parking lot. Rusted old pipes and a few wires and braces from the original waterline appear along the trail.

The town may have died, but the Catwalk itself has stayed vital. In the mid-1930's the Civilian Conservation Corps, the work program developed by F.D. Roosevelt to combat the rampant unemployment of the Great Depression rebuilt the Catwalk as a tourist attraction.  In 2012, the Whitewater-Baldy Fire destroyed much of the vegetation upstream, leading to massive flooding that washed away the work that the CCC had done. The bridge system was rebuilt and is now open for approximately .5 miles from the parking lot. This is a very accessible area and easily hiked by all ages and abilities, including wheelchairs. After the bridge system, the trail has been cleared for another .5 - .75 miles. Beyond that, backpackers can follow a much more rugged trail.

 Today the area is managed by the Gila National Forest  as a day-use area. It has picnic tables and restrooms.