Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument

We are back out on the road for another big trip. Our first stop after leaving our winter quarters in Arizona was in Silver City New Mexico. This is an historic mining town with some wonderful historic buildings and history. East of town is a gigantic open pit mine with a viewing area. It is quite the site to behold. We were here in November of 2013 and checked out the town (see that blog entry) but we are back this time to go to the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument.

These cliff dwellings were built in natural caves that had been used for thousands of  years by the Mogollon (pronounced mug-e-own) peoples. The structures date to just before 1300 which corresponds to the peak of the Puebloan people's building throughout the southwest. It is believed that the structures were only used for about 30 years. Later they were used by many people passing through who used the wood timbers for firewood so now only the stone structures remain. This is also the area where the legendary Apache leader Geronimo was born in 1820.

The Monument is only about 45 miles north of Silver City but it took us an hour and a half to drive up due to the road being very narrow with very sharp curves combined with many steep ups and downs. There is a small visitor center that provides all the information you need to check out the area. The cliff dwellings are accessible by a 1 mile round trip hike. You can actually go into the well preserved rooms which are about 80 percent original construction. We really enjoyed walking through the rooms while getting a lot of valuable information from an onsite volunteer. This was well worth the off-the-beaten-path excursion.

Just a short distance from the cliff dwellings you can make a stop and see some pictographs and another small dwelling. This is on the "Trail to the Past" at the Lower Scorpion Campground.  

We drove up via New Mexico 15 straight out of Silver City and came back via New Mexico 35 because it has fewer twists and turns. The return trip was 20 miles longer but took about the same about of time and was less stressful.

We also found it interesting that the area of the cliff dwellings is right at the continental divide and the headwaters of the Gila River. When driving north-south in Arizona we cross the Gila River as it flows (so to speak, as it is usually dry by the time it gets to the middle of Arizona) to meet the Colorado River near Yuma. 

Gila River at origins