New Mexico is an awe-inspiring destination with a stunning array of national parks. From the arid desert to the vibrant Sonoran Desert, these places are guaranteed to take your breath away.
There are plenty of ways to explore the state, from hiking to camping to visiting national monuments. Whether you’re looking to see historic sites or want to learn about the state’s unique culture, these parks are sure to have something for everyone.
In the sandstone cliffs of northwest New Mexico, Chaco Culture National Historical Park preserves one of America’s most unique and spectacular cultural and historic sites. The ancient center of a once-thriving Pueblo culture, it has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as an outstanding example of world cultural patrimony.
The surviving structures, roads, and archaeological remains at this remote site testify to the extraordinary organizational and engineering abilities of ancestral Pueblo peoples more than four centuries ago. In addition to the great houses at Chaco, visitors can also explore a range of other archeological features like petroglyphs and cliff dwellings.
A short hike takes you to the ruins of Pueblo Bonito, one of the largest great houses in the park. It’s a complex establishment with hundreds of rooms and 32 kivas (stomping grounds). The kiva is also connected to other great houses via a network of roads.
City of Rocks National Monument is a park in southwestern New Mexico that features a unique formation of giant rocks. The park was created as a result of a volcanic eruption that occurred 35 million years ago and was later sculpted by erosion.
The park offers hiking trails, excellent mountain biking, wildlife viewing, stargazing, picnic areas and a visitor center. It also organizes a wide variety of thematic events.
The park is operated under a cooperative agreement between the National Park Service and the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation. Both agencies allocate partial funding to its operation.
White Sands National Park is one of the most unique and otherworldly landscapes in the world. Located in southern New Mexico, this park features the largest gypsum sand dunefield in the world, which is a wonder to behold.
This park is home to a variety of wildlife, from the sand dunes themselves to various creatures that have evolved to adapt to the sands. For example, there are a variety of birds that get white to help them hide from predators and stay cooler in the hot summer sun.
Visiting White Sands is an experience that’s never the same twice! It’s also a place where nature and art collide, with the desert dunes being used in many feature films, music videos and commercials.
Located in southeastern New Mexico, Carlsbad Caverns National Park is a world-renowned destination for explorers. The park is home to a vast network of caves and features trails and lookout vistas above ground as well.
The area around Carlsbad Caverns was once a coastline, with marine life creating a reef and laying down limestone building blocks that formed the park's caves. The water receded and tectonic movements uplifted the Guadalupe Mountains, creating this unique landscape.
The main attraction within the park is Carlsbad Cavern, but there are other caves and natural facets that draw visitors to the park. For example, the park's Lechuguilla Cave is known for its unique speleothems and formations. Its gypsum "chandeliers" extend six meters (18 feet) in length, and the cavern is also the summer home of a colony of migratory Mexican free-tailed bats.
The jumbled, volcanic rocks of Petroglyph National Monument are alive with images pecked into the stone by people who knew they would last. They created these messages to communicate with those who came before.
Thousands of these drawings are carved into the volcanic basalt escarpment of Albuquerque's 17-mile-long West Mesa between 1300 and 1650. Depictions of stars, spirals, geometric shapes, animal figures and people reflect aspects of the Pueblo Indians' social and religious lives.
They also reflected the Ancestral Puebloan culture that dominated the region from 400-700 years ago. Like the great houses of Chaco Canyon whose walls align with summer and winter solstice, these drawings often include points related to celestial alignment.
