Cliffs & Ladders — Bandelier National Monument
By this point in our travels, we've seen quite a few ancient pueblos and cliff dwellings (and we'll see more in Mesa Verde.) Bandelier, however, is the first place that let us climb up to them!
Frijoles Canyon
Located close to Los Alamos, this site was created by volcanic eruptions more than one million years ago. The resulting volcanic ash was compressed over time, to form tuff, which looks a lot like sandstone. This soft stone makes great building material, which was used by ancient pueblo people to create cliff dwellings, as well as to build a village in the canyon below the cliffs. These peoples are believed to have left the area about 200 years before the arrival of the Spanish.
View of down to the Tyuoni pueblo (circle at bottom) from the Frye Trail/Cliff Dwellings.
View of the Cliff Dwellings from the Tyuonyi pueblo.
The monument was established in 1916 and named for a Swiss-born American who was among the first archeologists to explore this area. In the 1920s, there was a guest house in the canyon, which was only accessible by a 2 mile trail. The Civilian Conservation Corps build a road into the canyon, along with rather beautiful historic buildings that make up the park museum and administration offices.
Long Houses were built in front of the cavates, or caves. Horizontal holes show the roof height of the houses.
We got to the monument by 8am, and didn't have to shuttle in from the local town (required after 9am). We had most of the trails to ourselves for about 90 minutes, after which time it got REALLY crowded!
View of Alcove House from below (look closely...you can see the ladders!)
Alcove House — 140 ft up. The structure in the house to the left is the kiva.
Tsankawi
A few miles away from the core monument area, is the Tsankawi village, which we REALLY enjoyed despite the 90F+ degree heat. That's saying something!
This pueblo, about 275 rooms in all, was inhabited by the Ancestral Tewa people in the 1400s, has not been excavated, as such the buildings are really just piles of rocks now. However, leading up to mesa on which the pueblo was built, you can see amazing evidence of rock erosion caused by human feet and water, as well as a lot of petroglyphs.
View taken from the "middle" level of caves or cavates, above is the mesa.
The path up to the village...you follow trails well worn into the rock by water and feet.
It was a tight squeeze at some points.
Once up on the mesa, it's wide open.
Tsankawi Village
Pottery shards at the village.
Rather than using ladders, toe hold trails were carved into the stone by the original inhabitants to move between cavates (caves) up to the village.
We used ladders to get between levels.
Cave
Petroglyphs
Cave Man Curtis!
Petroglyphs