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The City of Rocks

Abandoned cliff dwellings and curious rock art aren’t the only bizarre features around Silver City. Like a demented artist, 30 million years of erosion have sculpted a cluster of freestanding volcanic rocks into a fractured city with narrow avenues and fanciful shapes. Approaching City of Rocks State Park, in the desert 25 miles south of Silver City, I have visions of a fairy-tale city with Hobbit-like creatures scurrying around.

No formal trails lead through the boulder-strewn playground. Think of the 680-acre park as one giant discovery zone. With little imagination, we see a stone rabbit towering above us, then like magic a jackrabbit materializes and hops into the shade under a bush. A 50-foot pelican perches over a campsite, while a real great horned owl sits on her nest in a niche at the top of a 100-foot pinnacle.

The wow-factor increases in the center of the bizarre boulder field. Avenues lead through squeeze slots and building-sized rocks invite kids of all ages to scramble topside to view the playscape city.

One crawlway leads into a cave formed by a jumble of rocks. A petroglyph stares at us at eye level. A thousand years ago, another person, perhaps as mystified as we are by the hallucinogenic landscape, chipped the image of a dancing stick man either wearing a feather headdress or having a really bad hair day.

“Did you see the Kopapelli pictographs?” a visiting archeologist from the University of Arizona asks us in the Visitor Center. With directions and a sketch, we scurry over the rocks like treasure hunters with a confusing map. Finally, we locate a palm-sized rock that covers a little hole in a boulder. Inside hides the perfect image of the hump-backed flute player painted in deep black. Nearby, a 3-foot image decorates the top of a boulder.

Both images look like they were painted yesterday, and maybe they were. “I think they probably date back to the 1930s,” the archeologist says.

Whitewater Canyon

Leaving the parched desert, drive 60 miles west of Silver City to Glenwood and discover what must have been paradise for Geronimo. When the U. S. Army put a death warrant on every male Apache in New Mexico, Geronimo and his band of warriors took refuge in the narrow recesses of Whitewater Canyon. After Geronimo surrendered in 1889, miners discovered rich lodes of gold and sliver high in the inaccessible canyon.

Graham Mining company built an ore mill near today’s picnic area and powered it’s generators with water piped through the rugged canyon. The canyon walls were so steep that they built a catwalk to support the pipeline. The mine closed in 1908 and in the 1930s the CCC rebuilt the catwalk as a recreation area for the Gila National Forest. Today, the 2-mile loop Catwalk National Recreation Trail rates as one of the most scenic trails in the West.

Deep shadows cool the wooded canyon and wildflowers with dancing butterflies line the trail. In tight places, the metal catwalk clings to the walls with the stream tumbling below. Overhead puffy clouds dot the strip of blue sky, and just when I think the view can’t get more scenic, the creek cascades over a boulder waterfall and creates a popular swimming hole. The trail finally dead-ends as the canyon narrows, but an extension climbs to top the mesa and continues into the Gila backcountry.

Exploring the mountains and desert around Silver City, it’s easy to see why the Mogollons and later the Apaches and Aldo Leopold considered the Gila to be sacred territory. They knew what Rand McNally, and many others, are just discovering.

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Gila Cliff Dwellings | City of Rocks State Park | Whitewater Canyon

Read more about New Mexico:

• Gila Cliff Dwellings
• Gila National Wilderness

• Silver City
• City of Rocks State Park
• New Mexico's Highway 152
• A DesertUSA reader's memories of New Mexico

More about the Mogollons

• The Mogollon: Their Magic
• The Native American Peoples: Early Formative Period