New Mexico's Triple Hitter
Visit three gold-class destinations within an hour’s drive of Silver City.
by George Oxford Miller
Rand McNally’s 2010 Road Atlas highlights Silver City, New Mexico, as one of the five “Best of the Road” destinations in America. Surrounded by scenic desert and rugged mountains and with a history that dates back 2,000 years, Silver City offers a triple-hitter for cultural and natural attractions.
Gila Cliff Dwellings | City of Rocks State Park | Whitewater Canyon
Gila Cliff Dwellings
Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, 40 miles from downtown, reminds us how forces uncontrollable, and often unpredictable, influence life in the Southwest. Standing in the courtyard of the ruins of the multifamily structure, you’d guess the residents left in a hurry. Six-inch cobs still fill a stone corncrib and painted images peek through the dust on 700-year-old plastered walls. The inhabitants also left pottery, now stored in museums, with intricate black and white designs unique to the area.
“The Mogollons chose this side canyon for their 42-room complex for good reasons. The sun angle creates natural heating and cooling,” the ranger tells us. “The summer sun shines over the opposite ridge but the canyon casts a shadow of cooling shade across the cliff dwelling. In the winter, the sun penetrates the rock shelters and warms the living areas.”
The Mogollon Mountains with abundant game and lush canyons ideal for farming have sustained humans for 2,000 of years. Pit houses date back to 100 A.D. and the Apaches roamed the mountains, the stronghold of Geronimo during historic times. Yet, only one generation of Mogollons with no more than 10 families built a permanent home here.
We climb a wooden ladder into the largest home site tucked into a rock shelter high on a cliff near the Gila River. The half-standing rock walls give no hint why the Mogollons abandoned their home in 1300 AD, a mere 30 years after moving into the canyon.
The ancients left their mark, literally, up and down the Gila River. The Trail to the Past, about a mile from the cliff dwellings, leads to a stone cliff covered with pictographs. The ochre rock paintings depict animals, circles, symbols, and mysterious human stick figures. The rocks hold tightly to the secrets of peoples who for thousands of years believed these rivers and mountains sacred.
Hiking the trails over mesas and through scenic canyons in the national monument, I can easy see why the Gila region captivated Aldo Leopold when he worked for the Forest Service. The dedicated conservationist led the Forest Service to establish the Gila Wilderness Area in 1924, the nation’s first. The Gila River remains the longest undammed river in the Lower 48.
Click here for page two of this story: City of Rocks State Park and Whitewater Canyon
Page 1: Silver City's 3 Attractions | Page 2: Silver City's 3 Attractions
Gila Cliff Dwellings | City of Rocks State Park | Whitewater Canyon
Read more about New Mexico:
- Silver City
- City of Rocks State Park
- New Mexico's Highway 152
- A DesertUSA reader's memories of New Mexico
More about the Mogollons
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