New Mexico Parks and Recreation Areas

Rising 200 feet above the valley floor, this massive sandstone bluff was a welcome landmark for weary travelers. A reliable waterhole hidden at its base made El Morro (or Inscription Rock) a popular campsite. Beginning in the late 1500s Spanish, and later, Americans passed by El Morro. While they rested in its shade and drank from the pool, many carved their signatures, dates, and messages. Before the Spanish, petroglyphs were inscribed by Ancestral Puebloans living on top of the bluff over 700 years ago. read more...

Phone: 505-783-4226   Price Range: $0 - $3   Open Season: N/A   Camping: Yes
Nearest Popular City: Ramah   Nearest Lake or River: N/A   Park Type: National Monument   Activities: Birding, Hiking, Camping   Details Provided By: El Morro

Once, thriving American Indian trade communities of Tiwa and Tompiro speaking Puebloans inhabited this remote frontier area of central New Mexico. Early in the 17th-century Spanish Franciscans found the area ripe for their missionary efforts. However, by the late 1670s the entire Salinas District, as the Spanish had named it, was depopulated of both Indian and Spaniard. What remains today are austere yet beautiful reminders of this earliest contact between Pueblo Indians and Spanish Colonials: the ruins of four mission churches, at Quarai, Aba, and Gran Quivira and the partially excavated pueblo of Las Humanas or, as it is known today, Gran Quivira. Established in 1980 through the combination of two New Mexico State Monuments and the former Gran Quivira National Monument, the present Monument comprises a total of 1,100 acres. read more...

Phone: 505-847-2585   Price Range: N/A   Open Season: N/A   Camping: No
Nearest Popular City: Mountainair   Nearest Lake or River: N/A   Park Type: National Monument   Activities: Birding, Nature Walks   Details Provided By: Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument

In 1838, the United States government forcibly removed more than 16,000 Cherokee Indian people from their homelands in Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, and Georgia, and sent them to Indian Territory (today known as Oklahoma). The impact to the Cherokee was devastating. Hundreds of Cherokee died during their trip west, and thousands more perished from the consequences of relocation. This tragic chapter in American and Cherokee history became known as the Trail of Tears, and culminated the implementation of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which mandated the removal of all American Indian tribes east of the Mississippi River to lands in the West. read more...

Phone: (505) 988-6888   Price Range: N/A   Open Season: N/A   Camping: No
Nearest Popular City: Santa Fe   Nearest Lake or River: N/A   Park Type: National Historic Trail   Activities: Auto Touring, Interpretive Programs   Details Provided By: Trail Of Tears National Historic Trail

El Malpais National Monument and Conservation Area was established in 1987 and is a relative newcomer to the National Park System. This monument preserves 114,277 acres of which 109,260 acres are federal and 5,017 acres are private. El Malpais means the badlands but contrary to its name this unique area holds many surprises, many of which researchers are now unraveling. Volcanic features such as lava flows, cinder cones, pressure ridges and complex lava tube systems dominate the landscape. Closer inspection reveals unique ecosystems with complex relationships. Sandstone bluffs and mesas border the eastern side, providing access to vast wilderness. read more...

Phone: 505-285-4641   Price Range: N/A   Open Season: N/A   Camping: Yes
Nearest Popular City: Grants   Nearest Lake or River: N/A   Park Type: National Monument   Activities: Backpacking, Biking / Bicycling, Birding, Hiking, Horseback Riding, Rock Climbing, Wildlife Watching, Camping, Auto Touring, Nature Walks, Star Gazing   Details Provided By: El Malpais National Monument

Here, great wave-like dunes of gypsum sand have engulfed 275 square miles of desert and have created the world's largest gypsum dune field. The brilliant white dunes are ever changing: growing, cresting, then slumping, but always advancing. Slowly but relentlessly the sand, driven by strong southwest winds, covers everything in its path. Within the extremely harsh environment of the dune field, even plants and animals adapted to desert conditions struggle to survive. Only a few species of plants grow rapidly enough to survive burial by moving dunes, but several types of small animals have evolved a white coloration that camouflages them in the gypsum sand. read more...

Phone: (505) 679-2599   Price Range: $0 - $3   Open Season: N/A   Camping: Yes
Nearest Popular City: Holloman AFB   Nearest Lake or River: N/A   Park Type: National Monument   Activities: Backpacking, Biking / Bicycling, Birding, Hiking, Auto Touring, Nature Walks, Interpretive Programs, Star Gazing   Details Provided By: White Sands National Monument

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. read more...

Phone: (505) 672-3861   Price Range: $0 - $10   Open Season: N/A   Camping: Yes
Nearest Popular City: Los Alamos   Nearest Lake or River: N/A   Park Type: National Monument   Activities: Backpacking, Birding, Hiking, Wildlife Watching, Camping   Details Provided By: Bandelier

Chaco is remarkable for its monumental public and ceremonial buildings, and its distinctive architecture. To construct the buildings, along with the associated Chacoan roads, ramps, dams, and mounds, required a great deal of well organized and skillful planning, designing, resource gathering, and construction. The Chacoan people combined pre-planned architectural designs, astronomical alignments, geometry, landscaping, and engineering to create an ancient urban center of spectacular public architecture - one that still amazes and inspires us a thousand years later read more...

Phone: 505-786-7014   Price Range: $4 - $8   Open Season: N/A   Camping: Yes
Nearest Popular City: Nageezi   Nearest Lake or River: N/A   Park Type: National Historic Park   Activities: Biking / Bicycling, Hiking, Camping, Nature Walks   Details Provided By: Chaco Culture National Historical Park

Aztec Ruins National Monument preserves structures and artifacts of Ancestral Pueblo people from the 1100's through 1200s. People associated with Chaco Canyon to the south built and used the structures, then people related to the Mesa Verde region to the north used the site in the 1200's. The monument was established in 1923, and designated a World Heritage Site in 1987. read more...

Phone: (505) 334-6174   Price Range: $0 - $4   Open Season: N/A   Camping: No
Nearest Popular City: Aztec   Nearest Lake or River: N/A   Park Type: National Monument, National Preserve   Activities: Birding   Details Provided By: Aztec Ruins

Pecos preserves 12,000 years of history including the ancient pueblo of Pecos, two Spanish Colonial Missions, Santa Fe Trail sites, 20th century ranch history of Forked Lightning Ranch, and the site of the Civil War Battle of Glorieta Pass. read more...

Phone: (505) 757-6414x1   Price Range: $0 - $3   Open Season: N/A   Camping: Yes
Nearest Popular City: Pecos   Nearest Lake or River: N/A   Park Type: National Historic Park   Activities:   Details Provided By: Pecos National Historical Park

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument offers a glimpse of the homes and lives of the people of the Mogollon culture who lived in the Gila Wilderness from the 1280s through the early 1300s. The surroundings probably look today very much like they did when the cliff dwellings were inhabited. It is surrounded by the Gila National Forest and lies at the edge of the Gila Wilderness, the nation's first designated wilderness area. This designation means that the wilderness character of the area will not be altered by the intrusion of roads or other evidence of human presence. read more...

Phone: (505) 536-9461   Price Range: $3 - $10   Open Season: N/A   Camping: Yes
Nearest Popular City: Silver City   Nearest Lake or River: N/A   Park Type: National Monument   Activities: Backpacking, Biking / Bicycling, Birding, Fishing, Hiking, Horseback Riding, Wildlife Watching, Camping, Nature Walks, Interpretive Programs, Star Gazing   Details Provided By: Gila Cliff Dwellings