Walk an ancient seabed full of hoodoos and fossils in this New Mexico gem

It’s the Southwest’s weirdest desert

Forty miles south of Farmington, New Mexico, a 45,000-acre stretch of badlands sits at 6,300 feet in the high desert of the Four Corners region.

Wind and water have carved the exposed rock into hoodoos, spires, and pinnacles made of sandstone, shale, mudstone, coal, and silt. The shapes look like they belong on Mars, not the American Southwest.

National Geographic Traveler put this place on its adventure destination list, but the rock formations are only part of the story.

An ancient sea left all of this behind

Between 70 and 74 million years ago, you would have stood on the shore of a massive inland sea that cut North America in half.

The Western Interior Seaway pulled back over time and left behind swamps, river deltas, and thick layers of sediment that buried entire forests.

The badlands you walk through today took shape fairly recently, between 3,000 and 6,000 years ago, after ice age flooding carved out the terrain.

Giant cracked eggs sit scattered across the desert floor

About two miles from the main Bisti trailhead, on mostly flat ground, you’ll find a group of rock formations that look like something hatched out of them.

In Navajo, Bisti means ‘among the adobe formations’ while De-Na-Zin means ‘Standing Crane.’ People also call the spot the Egg Factory or Alien Egg Hatchery.

The egg-shaped rocks run five to six and a half feet long, and they formed when mineral deposits built up around a core in braided streams.

Softer mudstone wore away over time and left the eggs exposed. Sunrise and sunset light turns them gold against the colorful cliffs behind them.

Flat stone wings balance on narrow pedestals

The Bisti Wings sit about a mile from the northwest parking area, and they stop you in your tracks. Flat slabs of harder rock extend outward like wings from thin pedestals of softer stone beneath them.

The whole thing looks like it should fall over, but it holds. Geologists call the process differential erosion, where different types of rock wear away at different speeds.

Photographers line up for these formations, and you can see why the moment you round the corner and spot them.

Hoodoo City looks like a forest of stone mushrooms

Wander off the main wash and into the ridges, and you’ll hit Hoodoo City. The light shifts through the day and changes how every single one of them looks.

Tall, thin rock spires stand in tight clusters, each one capped with a harder rock that shields the softer stone below from rain and wind.

They look like mushrooms or totem poles lined up in rows. Nearby, the Rock Garden spreads out with hundreds of smaller hoodoos and odd stones, most less than a foot high.

30-foot petrified logs still show their bark and growth rings

Pieces of petrified wood lie scattered across the wilderness, and some of the logs stretch over 30 feet long. You can still see fossilized bark and growth rings in the stone.

The De-Na-Zin side, the eastern half of the wilderness, holds the highest concentration of petrified wood and fossils.

These trees grew in lush swamps along the shoreline of that ancient inland sea, got buried under sediment, and slowly turned to stone over millions of years.

You can look and photograph all you want, but removing any natural material is strictly against the rules.

They airlifted a T. rex relative out by helicopter

In 1997, volunteer researcher Paul Sealey found the remains of a large meat-eating dinosaur in the wilderness.

Paleontologist Dr.Thomas Williamson of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science led the dig the following year.

The dinosaur, Bistahieversor sealeyi, earned the nickname “Bisti Beast.” It ran about 30 feet long with a skull over three feet, and it roamed this ground about 74 million years ago as an early relative of Tyrannosaurus rex.

The New Mexico Army National Guard airlifted the fossil-filled plaster casts out by helicopter as part of a training exercise.

Shark teeth and turtle shells poke out of the rock

Scientists have pulled over 200 species of plant and animal fossils from these rock formations.

The list includes duck-billed dinosaurs like Parasaurolophus, horned dinosaurs like Pentaceratops, turtles, fish, and crocodiles.

If you look closely at the rock, you might spot shark teeth or turtle shells embedded in the surface. Small invertebrate fossils and ancient clam shells turn up.

Collecting any vertebrate fossils breaks federal law, but this area remains one of the best places on Earth to study the shift from the age of dinosaurs to the age of mammals.

The Navajo have called this land sacred for centuries

Navajo Nation land surrounds the wilderness, and parcels of private Navajo land sit within its boundaries.

The Navajo people have lived in and around this area for centuries, and they hold the land for ceremonial purposes.

Humans have lived in this region for more than 10,000 years, and ruins and culturally important sites dot the surrounding landscape.

Fences mark private Navajo land clearly, and you need to stay within the wilderness boundaries at all times.

Stay after dark for the Milky Way overhead

The remote location keeps light pollution low, and that makes this one of the best night sky photography spots in the Southwest.

At sunrise and sunset, the gray and white formations shift into warm shades of gold, orange, and purple. Photographers return again and again because the changing light makes every visit look different.

The wilderness sits along the Trails of the Ancients Byway, one of New Mexico’s designated Scenic Byways, so the drive in sets the mood before you even step out of the car.

There are no trails, no water, and no cell service

You won’t find a single marked trail anywhere in this wilderness. You pick your own path through washes and over ridges, and that’s part of the draw.

Bring a compass, GPS device, or offline map app, because the maze-like terrain turns people around fast. There’s no water inside the wilderness and no restrooms except a vault toilet at the Bisti trailhead.

The area costs nothing to visit, stays open year-round, and needs no permits for day hiking or primitive camping. Motorized vehicles, drones, bikes, campfires, and collecting anything are all prohibited.

Explore the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness in New Mexico

If you want to see these formations up close, head about 40 miles south of Farmington off Highway 371. Turn east on Road 7297 and follow gravel roads for about two miles to the main Bisti trailhead.

The most striking formations sit one to four miles from the parking area. Bring plenty of water, sun protection, sturdy shoes, and navigation tools.

The Farmington Museum and Visitor Center at 3041 E. Main St. in Farmington carries maps with GPS coordinates for key spots.

Skip any day when rain is in the forecast, because the clay roads and trails turn dangerously slick when wet.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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