Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument

Visited: Feb 2017

Nearby town: Silver City, NM

In our quest to visit all 61 National Parks (now 62! - at the end of 2019, Congress has officially designated White Sands as a National Park), we have tried to visit as many of the other units administered by the National Park Service as we can. There's a lot of them - 419! I'd love to visit them all, but that might be a tad too ambitious 😊 Anyway, we try and see as much as we can. This particular trip led us deep into the isolated wilderness of southwestern New Mexico.

FYI, here's my blogpost on White Sands (which was also visited on this trip back in 2017). Who'd have thunk that a couple months after writing the post that the site would be "upgraded" to a National Park? Since both Tara and I have been to White Sands, Tara and I have now been to 48 National Parks! We increased our count without leaving home. 😁

Link: https://paulnationalparks.blogspot.com/2019/11/white-sands-national-monument.html

Anyway, back to Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument...

The park lies about an hour and half drive north of the nearest city to the monument, Silver City. It's a very windy, mountainous road. On our way there, we picked up some hitchhikers. A nice, older couple that had gotten a little lost and strayed from the Continental Divide Trail. Their "trail nicknames" were "Flat-lander" and "Chips"...😊

Additionally, the road dead-ends at the Monument, so the only way back is the way you came. Therefore, you really have to dedicate some time to get out there, this is not a quick roadside stop.

The reward is worth it, the Gila Cliff Dwellings are some excellent ruins. Certainly not as impressive as the dwellings at Mesa Verde, but still very neat.

The dwellings were once the home of the Mimbres Culture, a branch of the Mogollon Peoples. The Mogollon Culture was prevalent in the area of present-day New Mexico, Arizona, and the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua.

These cliff dwellings were built in the latter half of the 13th century (around 1275 AD) and were inhabited until sometime in the 14th century. It is not known exactly why the Mimbres left the area, but it was likely due to a sustained period of drought. 

The first Americans of European descent to discover the cliff dwellings were the party of Henry B. Ailman, a miner from Silver City. Funny story, Ailman and his friends had been summoned to jury duty in the summer of 1878. Not wishing to participate, they headed out on an indefinite prospecting trip and stumbled across the site. The ruins gained the attention of a number of archaeologists, historians, and tourists, and in 1907, Theodore Roosevelt designated the area as a National Monument under the Antiquities Act.

Your first stop should be the Visitor Center, which has a good museum with lots of exhibits and artifacts from the Mogollon Peoples and the Apache. Then get back in your car and drive to the Cliff Dwellings trail head. This is a pleasant, mile-loop that takes you along the Gila River and then up to the cliff dwellings themselves. This is a self-guided tour, but during the summer months you can catch a ranger-led guided tour.

The trail starts by crossing the Gila River. This is near the location of the headwaters of the Gila River. The Gila River eventually meets up with the Colorado River in the town I grew up in: Yuma, Arizona. In Yuma, the Gila River is almost always dry (I might have seen water in it once, during a flash flood), so it was cool to see this river flowing.

The trail goes along the river for a little bit, and then it's a small climb up to the dwellings. This is really your only chance to see the dwellings from afar, so stop for some pics.

Archaeologists have identified 46 rooms among these dwellings, and predict they were occupied by about 10 to 15 families. Enjoy your time as you scramble around these dwellings and soak in the views. There is one ladder, but it's not too crazy.

I'm so glad we got to spend some time in Silver City, NM. It was a nice little bonus to end our trip on. It's a cool old mining town, filled with history and unique architecture. It's also a college town (home to Western New Mexico University), so it's got a little bit of a night life. Tara and I liked this town a lot.

this canal used to be the main street. But when it flooded in the early 1900s it was abandoned and is now a nice city park

liked this old theater sign

Grant County Museum

Tara loved this old house

Grant County Courthouse

colorful streets

Silver City and Gila Cliff Dwellings is a great place to visit.

For more info: https://www.nps.gov/gicl/index.htm