An Old Trip to Older Cliff Dwellings (56k Killa)

[Ashton]

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, my wife and I traveled down to New Mexico from our home in California to see my family and our other daughter. I'll try and spare the long winded-ness I'm known for and get to the pictures and descriptions... 'cause that is what we are all really here for, is it not?

The trip down to New Mexico is a familiar one to us. We travel the same basic path through Nevada and Arizona, mostly because it's largely empty and relatively speedy limits of travel means we make good time. The trip down there is a story in it's own right, owing to our over zealous adventure sense and hyper confidence in an under equipped vehicle. There is a multitude of cool things to see and do in the Nevada desert-scape off Hwy 95. You don't even need 4 wheel drive, but it helps. Our capable rover, dubbed ∩OV Firefly (that reads ∩northodox Overland Vehicle Firefly) is deceptively apt for adventure travel and we have done a few things in it. I'll leave those stories for another rainy day... or pandemic lockdown.

After we had suitable time to relax and enjoy a bit of family time with me mum the night before, we awoke on a chilly morning to gather the troops and visit one of the nations lesser visited monuments. I was comfortable and didn't really want to get out of bed. Neither did my stud, Artemis.

As a quick side note: One could make an adventure of the lesser visited national sites. There are some interesting prospects in some back water places.

Taking Pinos Altos Rd out of Silver City, we drive through the familiar upper pine, fir and juniper dominated forests in these parts. We have some deciduous trees - cottonwoods, aspens and such, but this is evergreen country and we have a lot of them. The road passes through a very old and very small town of the same name and that, again, is a story for another day. This corner of the US is little traveled in comparison to the rest of the continent and a lot of history remains just below the surface. Every so often you can stumble across (or find easily if you know where to look) a well preserved piece of history. I invite you to find your own adventure.

The road continues on through the Gila National Forest and makes a turn towards Mimbres at Lake Roberts. From Mimbres, you can head east out the Black Range (oooh, more adventures) and hit I-25, or you can head back towards HWY 180 and into Silver City. As a kid, we used to make the loop in our cars. Sometimes as fast as possible, sometimes with less haste. There were bragging rights and times kept. A good deal of betting of all sorts of goods was done. Women were swooned, others scorned. Good times.

The views along this stretch of the highway are mostly canyon walls and pine forests, but at some points you get great glimpses of the watershed divide. You can stand at points and look left as one watershed drains to the Colorado River in Arizona and the other watershed drains into the Rio Grande, down Mexico way. A quick view back down towards the west and the Gila watershed (which is where I have a residence).

This area is ripe with the remnants of volcanic activity and is home to several ancient calderas. Like the more famous Yellowstone, these large magma chambers dominated the landscape for tens of millions of years and created the basis for the formations we see today. The results of those ancient lava eruptions are clearly visible in the bare cliffs and strata of the mountains with layers on layers, revealing millions and millions of years of history. *SQUEE*

Just before you get to the monument entrance there is a complex of hot springs down on the Gila River. There are some to be found, naturally, by hiking up and down the river and it's forks on trails accessed by a number of parking areas and trail heads. There are also privately owned ones that you can visit for a very small fee and camp at for a nominal rent. I always love to hop from cold Gila river to warm hot springs and in the winter, when access to this area isn't closed, there is no better place to spend a day. I won't mention names, as one of these is owned by a family friend. To be sure, there is no services out here and even the close ones are remote. This here is what we call frontier land. I include a landmark for reference if you ever end up in this area and are interested in spending a day in some amazing hot pools.

Pulling into my favorite (paid) hot spring spot, the wife and I noticed this beauty in her natural habitat. She read 'REX overland' on her quarter panel, if memory serves. They were gone before I could go interrupt their serenity.

We left my mother and my first born at the well maintained and very comfortable hot springs in the capable hands of a dear friend while the wife and I continued on to the monument. As you can see on the second picture, the two places are within hiking distance, if one was so inclined.

More to follow!!

 

[bgenlvtex]

Awesome, well done!

 

[Ashton]

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument was created in 1907 by President Roosevelt (Teddy, not Frank) as "the only place in the National Park Service that interprets and preserves part of the Mogollon Culture history." The Mogollon were a ancient Native culture that lived in the area a long time ago, somewhere between the older civilizations that lived there as far back as history records and the new cultures that leave cracker wrappers on the trail as decoration. I love history. I love taking myself back and pretending all up in the scene. I have a great imagination and I love using it. I do not love the headslapping behavior of most of the visitors to these beautiful places.

A few small pieces of refuse and an overzealous raven or two aside, we had a great time. First stop was the monument visitors center for all the displayed artifacts and interpretive videos. This is a quiet place that ushers a sense of needing to use your indoor voice, so the bubbly personality of the young female park service employee was a standout. She was from Indiana. I don't have a picture of her, but I do have pictures of some other cool stuff you can see in the building.

The trail head that you use to walk up Cliff Dweller Canyon (which has Cliff Dweller Creek running through it) is actually down the road a bit from the visitors center, so we hopped in the car and parked a little closer. There is also a museum there with a few interesting tid bits. This is a lovely little valley, I can easily see why it would be used for habitation. Here in the elevation of the divide, there is stable weather and year round water. Springs, both hot and cold. Shelter in caves and canyons and materials to build. Animals would undoubtedly roam the alpine meadow and drink from the streams and river. I could easily talk myself into being one of the unknown number of folk who regularly move into the wilderness and live out their lives. I would have stayed here if I ever came upon it while searching for a home.

Crows or Ravens? The wife and I couldn't agree. Either way, these suckers were big and not even a little shy.

We figured we would visit the museum on the way back. The male counter-part of the bubbly park service employee at the visitor center insisted on stopping us and giving us the safety spiel and confirmed we had the recommended amount of water for the "moderate to serious" hike with "dangerous steep sections". I remember walking up this trail before a bridge had ever been made and avoiding snakes in the river while doing so. I have walked this trail a few times in my youth (more stories for another pandemic) and so I was only a little bit smug. My pregnant wife was kind and courteous, until the youthful employee pointed out she may want to take it extra easy because of her affliction. She is nothing if not stubborn and she was half way across the bridge before he finished his sentence. Poor kid.

More to come!!

 

[Ashton]

Back in the old days you walked across the sand bar that is created at the mouth of Cliff Dweller Creek as it enters the west fork of the Gila River. They have since spent a bit of coin and gussied the place up. Makes for a much nicer walk and you get a free interpretive guide that you can use at different points on the walk up to the dwellings to help enhance the history and explain geographical features of the place. I will shamelessly use that information to bolster my own posting.

This canyon has a spring at the end of it which has run perpetually since who knows when. The spring feeds the creek here and with that continual run off, humans (and may be h. erectus) have naturally found this a pretty swell place to live. In more modern times, the Apache wars and the movement of settlers into the west changed the normal habitation and migration patterns of the humans who have lived here. Many millions of years before that, the whole place was volcanic and probably didn't habituate many humans at all. The rock layers, with the beige tuff and the darker andesite rock above it. So over a buncha millions of years all this rock was deposited, and gas pockets and smaller magma chambers emptied and left behind caves which were then exposed by Mother Nature and her lover, Time. People lived in them, some other people 'discovered' the place, and here we stand! History and Geography in one nutshell.

A pretty trail, to be sure. The free interpretive self guided hiking notes are pretty... meh. Google searching a whole buncha nerdy stuff and putting it in here wouldn't be all that interested, if I'm honest. If it interests you, like it does for me, you'll go find the info you are curious about.

More Pics!

The "steep and dangerous" portion of the hike is, in fact, steep. For anyone other than an unattended toddler, it is as safe as any other well defined path carved from the rock and manicured for easy walking. I think the quality of people visiting the park must be such that seemingly normal trails are deemed 'dangerous', or the need for disclaimers is leaked into every part of society. Even with her affliction, my wife was able to billy goat her way up the path.

A rant for a different day.

To be fair, this is the view down the hill we just came up. If you find this scary, then I suppose the park service employee is doing their job well and warning the good folks of impending danger.

Before I post all the wonderful photos of a well preserved and completely tangible piece of ancient history, I'm going to put this seemingly boring yet incredibly captivating rock here. I found it beautiful and stood a while taking in the scenery and spectacle. Wow. Could have been the 'moderate to difficult' hike in to the spot, but I was certainly feeling a little giddy by this point.

More to come!!

 

[Ashton]

That's a lot of scrolling and bandwith to finally get to the good stuff.

The Gila Cliff Dwelling National Monument is here for the preservation and protection of this site. They keep it accessible to anyone (not so wheelchair friendly I'm afraid) and they ask that you respect that. As such, you can climb on certain parts (the ladders are put there by the park service) and are invited to touch anything you want. There are some protected spaces that could be accessed (and have.. again, another story) and sometimes you can still find artifacts lying around (though mostly around the other ruin sites in the area and paths around them). The common sense creed of leaving a place as you found it is preached here and, mostly, a good job of it is done.

The beams were part of the building done around 1200 ad, as this particular cave system has been used for over 3000 years of record. Apparently the soot layer on the roof provides us evidence and some of the tools (classic mortar holes are seen, for grinding corn and nuts) found here are dated at least that old. This is perhaps the largest cave complex in this area, but not the only one to be lived in. You can see some of the other ones on trails around the monument and the national forest lands. We did not visit those sites today.

Being up in these ruins you get a visceral sense of what it was like to live here. I took some time to partake of a ritual that i'm positive was performed in this same cave for thousands of years. I broke up some of my favorite flower, said a prayer, and got a little more connected to a different energy. We all connect in our different ways, I suppose.

The trail through the caves is only a few hundred yards, but you can really spend a good amount of time in and among the ruins. These aren't recreated, they are patched and repaired to some extent, but the stones are the same ones built into the cave by centuries of dwellers. Touching the natural rock of the cave is like sharing a handshake with someone from another time. I frigin love sites that let you get this kind of hands on history.

You can return 'VIA STAIRS", as the sign with a view suggests. Oooooooor, you can tickle your sense of adventure and travel how the Mogollon traveled in and out of these caves.

A lovely site this is. I could play around on it for hours. We took our time and enjoyed the place thoroughly before we headed back down the loop towards the trail head museum.

There are a few teasers on the path back down. Inaccessible caves with obvious dwellings in them. Those are the ones that drive my curiosity into dangerous grounds. If only I had a grappling hook and a rope ladder.

More to come!!

 

[Ashton]

The walk back to the museum is flavorful too. A couple of pictures to make a fact of that statement. In one picture you can juuuusssst make out our car in the parking lot waaaaaayyyyy off in the distance. Being a child at heart, I whipped out my car key fob, put it to my head and pressed the button. With a 600+ plus sight line I was able to get the thing to beep. I even made a video to prove it, but you'll have to take my word for it because I don't feel like upload it to imgur using my hotspot.

The amazing wife, formerly co-pilot in training. She's afflicted with a crotch goblin in this photo.

The walk back is far easier than the easy walk up and since it's a loop I suppose one could go this way to get to the dwellings too. I sense that the squared away and gung ho park service employee - acting troll of the bridge down there - may not feel the same way. What is life, if not to be lead in adventure and circumstance so as to give it meaning?

The museum shows some neat relics and does a bit of explanation of the site, but really was pretty underwhelming in terms of cultural history. Perhaps that was tucked away in a book on a shelf in there. I did the tourist loop and took some snaps and this is what I saw.

One of the most often found relics in this area are pottery shards and with the levels of habitation here there are shards all over the place. You can find them all up and down the Gila River, in fact, I've found some a few mountain tops over in the valley by my house.

There was a neat display about the building techniques using the local Gila Conglomerate sandstone, which was the material the ancient people of this land used to build walls. Being New Mexican (mostly) I'm pretty adept at building walls. Or is it jumping them?

A few creatures occupied this museum, keeping a vigilant eye out and having nothing to do with the local culture that this damn place was built to protect and preserve. I mean seriously... they could have left the Mexican Grey Wolf and the Trout up at the visitors center and given me a bit more about Mogollon life, culture and beliefs.

I mean this is the Cliff Dwelling Trailhead Museum and I'm finding more general info on the Gila region and the forest than anything. Apparently most of the history that I wanted to see is at the museum at my Alma Mater, Western New Mexico University (which interestingly, or not, has a great biology/geology department).

Feeling a bit let down by the museum we made our way back to the car and down the road to check out some homestead ruins that were excavated as they were building the roads through here. This is one of a few sites like this around the valley.

I'm always less anxious to take pictures on the ride home. The journey there is the fun for me, the place is exciting and stirs my imagination. The drives home are usually for reflecting and pondering and recovering. I did manage to get a couple pics on the way home to wrap this thread up neatly.

After we stopped by the hot springs for a bit of a soak, we snagged up the familia and headed back down 527 to Lake Roberts. We merged on to 15 and back through the historic town of Pinos Altos (they have a lightly restored, almost original 1870's bar and music hall that is still active there and is a great place to get some good grub and a cold beer). On down the hill towards Silver City and over the divide into my home section of the Gila River Valley.

Sitting at home that night talking about the ponderings we had that day, the things that were seen, the experiences that were had - and unwinding with a nice dram of scotch. Neat, thank you. Cheers, and if we ever cross paths lets share a dram together!

Till next time, stay ∩northodox!

 

[JCWages]

Love it! Thanks so much for sharing the adventure. I put this place on my list.

 

[JimBill]

I went through most of what you pictured back in 2001. Flew into Tucson and rode shotgun until El Paso. It was an adventure- we even risked eating "fresh" sushi in Las Cruces NM while waiting overnight in a Wallyworld parking lot for a tire to arrive the next morning. Ah to be young again! Fond memories of Silver City and Gila. Unfortunately no pictures survived, so I greatly appreciate you sharing.