Bandelier National Monument is in north-central New Mexico , in the southwestern United States. It extends across Frijoles Canyon and several other canyons that cut into the Pajarito Plateau, a flat-topped highland. The monument contains the ruins of Native American cliff dwellings.
Early Native Americans first lived in the Bandelier area more than 11,000 years ago. From about 1150 to 1550, Frijoles Canyon was a center of culture and commerce for the Ancestral Pueblo people. The Ancestral Pueblo, once called the Anasazi, were the ancestors of the modern-day Pueblo , a native people of the American Southwest. The people carved homes into the canyon walls, which consisted of volcanic tuff—that is, rock made of compressed volcanic ash. Using bricks made of carved tuff or adobe (sun-dried clay), they built field houses and ceremonial chambers called kivas. They planted crops along a stream on the canyon floor and on the broad plateau above the canyon.
The Ancestral Pueblo largely abandoned the Bandelier area during the 1500’s. Some historians believe that the people there struggled with overpopulation, drought, and the breakdown of a trading system. Spanish settlers lived in the canyon beginning in the mid-1700’s, when New Mexico was a Spanish province. In the 1880’s, the Swiss-born American archaeologist Adolph F. A. Bandelier made extensive studies of the site. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation creating the national monument. The monument is managed by the National Park Service .
