New Mexico hides a canyon road with hot springs, lava cliffs and pueblo ruins near Albuquerque

It’s less than an hour from Albuquerque

Jemez Springs sits in a narrow canyon about 55 miles north of Albuquerque, tucked into the Jemez Mountains where the Jemez River cuts through red rock and volcanic cliffs.

The village runs along the Jemez Mountain Trail National Scenic Byway, a federally designated route through ponderosa pine forests and canyon walls.

People have come here for the mineral-rich hot springs for thousands of years, with archaeological evidence near Soda Dam going back to around 2,500 BC. The hot springs are just the start.

Pueblo ruins and a 1621 Spanish mission still stand here

The Jemez people, who call themselves Hemish, migrated to this canyon from the Four Corners area in the late 1200s.

They speak Towa, and around 1350 they built the pueblo of Giusewa, which means “place of the boiling waters,” right in the narrow San Diego Canyon.

Spanish missionaries showed up in the late 1500s and started building the San Jose de los Jemez Mission at Giusewa in 1621. That mission only lasted about 20 years.

Today, Jemez Pueblo sits seven miles south and is the only Towa-speaking pueblo left in the world.

Walk through 110-foot mission walls built from canyon limestone

The Jemez Historic Site preserves what remains of Giusewa Pueblo and the San Jose de los Jemez Mission, which earned National Historic Landmark status in 2012.

The mission church walls run 110 feet long and stand six to seven feet thick at the base, all built from local limestone. A paved interpretive trail covers about 1,400 feet through the ruins.

Inside the heritage center, exhibitions tell the story through the words of today’s Jemez people. Admission runs $7 for adults, and kids 16 and under get in free.

Soak in mineral tubs at an 1870s bath house

The Jemez Springs Bath House dates to the 1870s, making it one of the oldest buildings in the village and a State Historical Site.

The Village of Jemez Springs owns and runs it as a nonprofit, with eight private cement tubs fed by natural mineral springs. The source water comes up between 159 and 189 degrees before cooling in holding tanks.

Back in the 1860s, the original hot spring erupted like a geyser, and someone built a rock wall around it. Early visitors rode in by stagecoach from Albuquerque and camped in tents for weeks.

Soda Dam took 7,000 years to build itself

Right along State Road 4, about a mile north of the village, a wall of calcium carbonate and travertine stretches 300 feet long, stands 50 feet high, and spreads 50 feet wide at the base.

That’s Soda Dam, and mineral-rich hot springs spent roughly 7,000 years stacking it up layer by layer. Fifteen hot springs surround the formation, with water temperatures reaching 117 degrees.

The volcanic magma beneath the Valles Caldera heats the water, which rises through cracks in the Jemez fault zone. You can pull over and walk right up to it for free.

A 200-foot volcanic rock shaped like a warship

Battleship Rock rises 200 feet straight up and looks like the prow of a Navy warship cutting through the forest.

It sits where the East Fork Jemez River meets San Antonio Creek, the point where the two combine to form the main Jemez River. You’ll find it about five miles north of the village off State Road 4.

The day-use area at its base has 33 picnic sites with grills, tables, paved parking, and accessible restrooms. From the trailhead here, you can hike the East Fork Trail about two miles to McCauley Warm Springs.

Hike a quarter mile to a 70-foot waterfall

Jemez Falls drops 70 feet on the East Fork of the Jemez River, the tallest waterfall in the Jemez Mountains. Dense ponderosa pines surround the falls at 7,880 feet.

From the Jemez Falls Campground day-use area, you reach the overlook on an easy quarter-mile hike. Smaller cascading falls sit just above the main drop.

One thing to know: the campground road closes in winter due to snow, which can add about three miles of road walking before you even reach the trailhead.

Warm springs in the forest at body temperature

Spence Hot Springs sits on Forest Service land about seven miles north of the village. A half-mile hike drops you down to the river, across a bridge, and back up to the pools.

The spring water averages around 95 degrees, though the Forest Service says it has been cooling in recent years and now runs closer to body temperature.

Keep water out of your nose here, because the Forest Service warns about Naegleria fowleri, a parasitic amoeba found in warm springs. No glass containers, camping, or campfires allowed.

Drive through 1920s railroad tunnels blasted from granite

In 1923, crews blasted two tunnels through Precambrian granite so the Santa Fe Northwestern Railway could haul timber out of the Jemez Mountains.

The Gilman Tunnels, named after railroad vice president William H. Gilman, cost $500,000 to build, which ate up more than half the budget for the entire railroad.

Floods along the Jemez and Guadalupe Rivers knocked the railway out of service in 1941. Someone later turned the tunnels into a road, and now you can drive through one vehicle at a time on Forest Road 376.

A 14-mile-wide supervolcano caldera run by the Park Service

The Valles Caldera formed about 1.2 million years ago when a massive eruption collapsed the ground into a bowl roughly 14 miles wide.

The National Park Service took over management in October 2015, making it one of the newer additions to the park system.

The preserve covers about 89,000 acres of mountain meadows, streams, and forests, with Redondo Peak topping out at 11,254 feet. The valley floor sits above 8,000 feet.

You can hike more than two dozen trails, fish the caldera’s streams, and catch ranger programs. Large elk herds roam the grasslands.

The 132-mile scenic loop passes all of it

The Jemez Mountain Trail National Scenic Byway runs a roughly 132-mile loop that threads through Jemez Springs and ties together almost everything worth seeing.

You drive from red desert canyon walls into alpine forests, passing Soda Dam, Battleship Rock, Jemez Falls, and the Valles Caldera along the way. The route also connects to Los Alamos.

Fenton Lake State Park, 19 miles north of the village at 7,650 feet, is stocked with rainbow and German brown trout. Side roads lead to the Gilman Tunnels and San Antonio Hot Springs.

Most vehicles can handle the byway as a day trip from Albuquerque or Santa Fe.

No stoplights, a few hundred people and 5,000 feet of elevation change

Jemez Springs has no stoplights and a population of a few hundred.

You can stop at Soda Dam without leaving your car or spend a full day linking waterfalls to warm springs on foot.

The elevation ranges from about 6,200 feet in the village to over 11,000 feet at Redondo Peak, so the landscape shifts from canyon to forest to open meadow in a single drive.

Everything from the bath house to the caldera sits along State Road 4 and its connecting forest roads.

Fill up the tank in Albuquerque, point north, and give yourself the whole day.

Visit Jemez Springs in New Mexico

You can reach Jemez Springs by driving north on State Road 4 from Albuquerque, about 55 miles through Sandoval County.

The village sits at roughly 6,200 feet in the Jemez River canyon. Summer highs in the village hit the 80s and 90s, but up near the caldera, temperatures drop 10 to 15 degrees.

The closest major airport is Albuquerque International Sunport, about an hour by car. Give yourself a full day for the scenic byway loop, or stay overnight to spread things out.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

Read more from this brand:

• This lakeside Minnesota town is quietly outclassing every coastal village in New England
• How a widowed rancher became the first female National Park custodian
• How 30,000 sheep destroyed a New Mexico grassland paradise