Walk through 700-year-old cliff rooms in New Mexico completely for free

It’s a living ruin, not a roped-off display

Deep in the Mogollon Mountains of southwest New Mexico, five natural caves hold the stone rooms where 10 to 15 families lived more than 700 years ago. You can walk through those rooms.

No velvet rope, no viewing platform from a distance. The monument sits 44 miles north of Silver City, free to enter, open almost every day of the year.

And most people have never heard of it.

Stone rooms built in the 1280s, still standing

The Mogollon people built these 40 rooms high above Cliff Dweller Canyon between 1276 and 1287. Tree rings in the original wooden roof beams confirmed those dates.

They farmed corn, squash, and beans along the Gila River, hunted deer and elk, and made brown pottery with black interiors that you can still see at the visitor center. By around 1300, they were gone.

More than 40 percent of the original wall plaster remains. President Theodore Roosevelt made it a national monument on Nov. 16, 1907.

Walk the one-mile loop through the caves themselves

The main trail runs one mile and takes about an hour.

It follows Cliff Dweller Canyon, crosses footbridges over a creek, and climbs about 180 feet to reach the caves. Inside, you move through habitation rooms, storage rooms, and communal spaces.

Ladders at different points give you views from angles most visitors miss.

Rangers are up there with you, and if you look past the stonework to the cave walls, they’ll point out the pictographs.

A panel of painted pictographs just a quarter mile away

Down near the Lower Scorpion Campground, the Trail to the Past covers a quarter mile to a Mogollon alcove dwelling and a large panel of pictographs painted with ground hematite. Human figures, animals, and other designs cover the rock.

A short walk from there, the TJ Ruin sits mostly unexcavated, an estimated 227 rooms that people occupied for roughly 900 years, from about 500 to 1400 AD.

The visitor center displays pottery, tools, and a full exhibit on the Chiricahua Apache, who controlled this area for centuries after the Mogollon left.

The wilderness that changed how America thinks about wild land

The monument sits at the edge of the Gila Wilderness, the first designated wilderness area on earth. Conservationist Aldo Leopold, then working for the U.S. Forest Service, pushed to protect it.

It was officially designated on June 3, 1924, four decades before Congress passed the Wilderness Act of 1964. More than 558,000 acres of canyon, mountain, and river corridor make up the wilderness today.

No roads go in, no motorized vehicles, no bicycles. What Leopold fought for is still exactly what it was.

Hot springs tucked into the canyon, heated from below

Ancient volcanic activity still heats water deep underground here, and it surfaces in pools you can soak in.

Lightfeather Hot Springs is the closest, about a 20-minute walk from the visitor center along the Middle Fork of the Gila River, with a couple of shallow crossings along the way.

Jordan Hot Springs is farther out, six to eight miles depending on your route.

The Jordan trail crosses the river repeatedly, so waterproof footwear will save you a lot of misery.

Over 1,600 miles of trails start here

The Gila National Forest covers 3.3 million acres and laces more than 1,600 miles of trails through it. The wilderness alone has hundreds of miles of hiking and horseback routes from more than 50 trailheads.

In 2024, a 100-mile Centennial Loop Trail was added to mark the wilderness area’s 100th anniversary.

If you want something shorter, a 4.2-mile loop near the cliff dwellings puts both the Gila and Aldo Leopold wildernesses in view at once.

The Continental Divide National Scenic Trail also cuts through 248 miles of the forest.

Black bears, Mexican gray wolves and a very rare trout

The wildlife list here runs long. Black bears, elk, mule deer, cougars, bobcats, and javelina all live in the area, and gray foxes turn up near the monument regularly.

The endangered Mexican gray wolf was reintroduced to the wilderness in 1998, and multiple packs now roam these canyons. Birders find bald eagles, spotted owls, wild turkeys, goshawks, and several hummingbird species.

A few select creeks hold the threatened Gila trout, a fish found almost nowhere else.

The Milky Way runs wall to wall on a clear night

There’s almost no light pollution out here. The nearest significant source of artificial light sits more than 40 miles from Cosmic Campground, a spot in the Gila National Forest that became the first International Dark Sky Sanctuary on National Forest land in North America.

On a clear, moonless night, the Milky Way fills the sky in a way that most Americans never see anymore.

The National Park Service runs a Stars Over the Gila program with ranger-led stargazing events if you want a guide for what you’re looking at.

A scenic byway that crosses the Continental Divide twice

The Trail of the Mountain Spirits Scenic Byway loops 93 miles through southwest New Mexico and ends near the cliff dwellings.

It crosses the Continental Divide twice and passes through six different climate zones along the way. Lake Roberts, a 72-acre mountain lake, sits along the route and draws people for fishing and picnicking.

The byway also runs through Pinos Altos, a mining town from the 1860s that still looks the part. Plan on 1.5 to two hours from Silver City to the monument on winding mountain roads.

No cell service, no entrance fee, almost no crowds

Your phone stops working somewhere on the drive in and doesn’t come back.

The monument is free, open every day except Christmas and New Year’s Day, and the cliff dwellings trail runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., with the last entry at 3:59 p.m. No pets on the trail, but kennels are available at the entrance.

If your vehicle is over 20 feet long, take NM Highway 35 instead of NM Highway 15, which gets narrow fast.

A slot canyon walkway and a free-flowing river nearby

Near Glenwood, the Catwalk Recreation Area runs a suspended metal walkway through a narrow slot canyon above Whitewater Creek.

The path follows where an 1890s mining water pipeline once ran, and the Civilian Conservation Corps rebuilt the structure in the 1930s.

Lake Roberts along NM Highway 35 adds trout fishing, camping, and wildlife watching to the trip.

The Gila River, one of the longest free-flowing rivers in the American Southwest, ties it all together, running through a landscape that ranges from desert grassland at the bottom to spruce-fir forest at the peaks.

Visit Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument in New Mexico

To walk through the cliff dwellings yourself, head to the end of NM Highway 15, about 44 miles north of Silver City. The address is NM-15, Gila, New Mexico 88038.

Admission is free, no pass required. The cliff dwellings trail is open daily from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., with last entry at 3:59 p.m. The monument is closed Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

Check the official website before you go for any seasonal trail closures or ranger program schedules.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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