Bandelier National Monument - New Mexico

Address:15 Entrance Road
Los Alamos, New Mexico
Tel: (505) 672-3861

This northern New Mexico monument is best known for its ancient cave dwellings, fantastic rock formations, reconstructed kivas, and various types of rock paintings. The archeological sites, rock formations, and transient waterfalls within and around the park are, to put it simply, captivating! Quick jaunts or rugged, overnight hikes are possible in the backcountry ruins.
The park offers lots of exciting activities including Nordic skiing (check with the park for weather conditions), bird watching, and a unique night walk (which allows visitors to take a 1-hour silent walk through the incredible archeological sites - in the dark, of course). Wildlife is abundant (the park preserves more than 23,000 acres of designated wilderness!), so don't be surprised to spot a herd of deer, elk, or a group of bats huddled together in a cave.

Best known for mesas, sheer-walled canyons, and several thousand ancestral Pueblo dwellings found among them, Bandelier also includes over 23,000 acres of designated Wilderness. The best-known archeological sites, in Frijoles Canyon near the Visitor Center, were inhabited from the 1100s into the mid-1500s, and earlier groups had used the area for thousands of years. The park was named for Adolph Bandelier, a 19th-century anthropologist.