El Morro National Monument

I have been aching to visit El Morro National Monument for years. Every time I planned a trip up there, which is 5 hours away, something comes up. So when my husband and I enjoyed an excursion to Sedona, I told him we were taking a detour to El Morro on our way home.

I’m so glad we did.

The Background

You can get all this stuff from Wikipedia or the Visitor’s Center. But if you’re curious about the fascinating history here, read on. Otherwise, skip to the next picture to read about our experience.

El Morro National Monument has been a destination for countless humans over centuries. A prominent sandstone cuesta with sweeping views and a pond fed by rainwater and snow melt at its base, it was the perfect site for the massive Atsinna Pueblo, the ruins of which can still be observed atop the monument. This pueblo boasted 335 rooms and housed over 600 ancestral Pueblo people around 1275 to 1350 AD. Even after that population left the area, it was an important place for local indigenous people due to being a water source on the Zuni-Acoma trade route. These were the first people to make their mark on the soft sandstone of El Morro in the form of petroglyphs, some of which you can still see today.

Notice I called it a cuesta. Per the National Park Service: “El Morro is part of a cuesta that extends well outside the boundaries of the national monument. A cuesta is a ridge with a gentle slope on one side and a steep slope or drop on the other. Spanish for “slope”, a cuesta is usually tilted between 40-45 degrees, but can be much more subtle. This tilt differentiates a cuesta from a mesa, which is an isolated flat rocky outcrop.”

When Spaniards invaded New Mexico, they often visited this area in their quest for the fabled El Dorado. When their efforts to find cities of gold disappointed them, they decided to try to get rich on the backs of the indigenous people living in the Southwest instead. Many Spaniards passed through this area attempting to colonize local people. In fact, the first written historical record of this place is by Antonio de Espejo, a Spanish explorer attempting to find 2 Franciscan priests who were killed while attempting to establish a mission in the area in 1583. Espejo wrote that he stopped at the “pool at the great rock” near Zuni. You will see some dates from the 1600s and Spanish inscriptions from people such as Don Juan do Onate. Even if you can read Spanish, the archaic Spanish here may be hard to decipher, so the inscription guide book provided at the visitor’s center offers translations.

Then Anglo-American settlers traveling with different caravans, such as the ill-fated Rose-Baley party of 1858, stopped here for water and carried on the tradition of carving their names into the cliff walls. You will see several from the Rose-Baley party, which was ambushed by Apaches shortly after at Colorado River near Needles, CA. You will also see inscriptions from military men traversing the area in the never-ending human quest for violent dominance over other humans. There is even an inscription from an 1857 camel expedition, funded by the US government as an experiment to see if camels were better suited than horses to the Southwest.

Passersby continued to add their names up to 1906, when the bluff became a national monument and new inscriptions became regarded as graffiti. Up through the 1930s, the government attempted to stave off Nature and preserve the names from erosion. Preservation efforts included removing recent names, filling in ancient carvings with pencil, eradicating invasive plants, and otherwise protecting this historical site.

The CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) established the Headlands Trail in the 1930s. They carved the trail and its steps right into the sandstone. You can see a lot of remnants of CCC work around New Mexico. I think if I could go back in time, I would go back to the 30s and work for the CCC.

Now, you can visit El Morro for free. You can enjoy the Headlands Trail, which is about 2 miles, or just do the Inscriptions Loop, which is about 0.7 miles. I think the Headlands Trail is worth it because you get to see so much, including the pueblo ruins and the work of the CCC.

Our Visit

We started at the visitor center. It has bathrooms and the usual collection of books, pamphlets, toys, keychains, and artisan crafts. The ranger working was incredibly informative. He gave us an overview of the history and ecology of the area and what we could expect from the hike. He gave us a laminated booklet to help us interpret the inscriptions and then we took off in the counter clockwise direction of the loop.

The hike is only about 2 miles. Per the ranger’s recommendations, we went counter clockwise. We ascended several flights of stairs and the views quickly became incredible. There was a bench to sit and enjoy the sweeping vistas all around.

Soon we reached the Atsinna pueblo ruins. We paused for a while to take in the tiny rooms, imagining the people who lived here, laughing, eating, praying, fighting, falling in love, giving birth and dying. Many more rooms of this Pueblo are now buried under dirt and grass. Mounds surround the visible part of the village, hiding decades of history underneath. There have been a few excavations, but to preserve the adobe structures, they were filled back in.

From there, we followed the top of the bluff, or the headlands. The trail is a bit easy to lose in several places. We were able to find it again by searching for cairns or the continuation of deep grooves carved into the sandstone by the CCC in the 1930s. The trail is pretty flat and very easy. We often hopped over pools of rainwater and navigated large sandstone builders but it was not challenging at all.

The ranger at the visitor center stressed to us the importance of not going off trail. The ecosystem here is very fragile and there is dirt on top of the bluff made up of algae, bacteria, and fungus that takes up to 200 years to regenerate after it is destroyed. There are also numerous plants that can be harmed by walking off trail.

The center of the bluff is a large forested indentation. The lighter sandstone observed around El Morro is actually called Zuni Sandstone and it was created in the Jurassic Period (200-145 million years ago). The sandstone is soft because it is made up of quartz crystals that were never buried deeply enough by surrounding dirt and rock to harden significantly. El Morro was part of a much larger desert made up of sand dunes about 150 million years ago. The lighter gray sandstone on top of the Zuni Sandstone is Dakota Sandstone from the Late Cretaceous time period (145-65 million years ago). The rock is comprised of shale and large-grained sands deposited by a shallow, warm sea that lapped over this area eons ago.

At one point on the headland, there is a massive cactus forest. We puzzled with another tourist couple about why they are so concentrated in that particular area. The couple theorized that maybe Pueblo people cultivated them for their prickly pear fruit.

We came down a paved switchback on the other side and trekked around the front of the bluff to see the inscriptions. There was still a little snow clinging to the shaded areas.

The cliff overhead is awe-inspiring. There are many blackened streaks on the cliff that are created by a combination of iron and manganese deposited by rain staining the fair Zuni sandstone.

We passed through an open gate and entered the Inscription Loop. This is where the guidebook comes in handy. If you don’t get one at the visitor center, then there is one hanging on the fence at the entrance of inscription section.

The inscriptions are pretty cool. Many of them don’t show up well in photos but they are much clearer in person. It is amazing how people created elaborate flourishes and clean, precise letters with merely a chisel or a horseshoe nail. Looking at inscriptions from the 1600s and 1700s really gives one perspective on the passage of time and the traces we leave behind on the world.

We had fun picking out the petroglyphs which somehow look just as recent as the inscriptions, despite being significantly older.

From there, we jaunted back to the visitor’s center, winding by the pond that has watered many people and horses and even camels over the years. The pond is so clear that it looks like a deep sinkhole with the reflections of the cliffs above. Swallow’s nests are built precariously onto the sandstone walls above.

The area around El Morro National Monument is just beautiful. Once smooth grassland, there is now pygmy forest of cedars, junipers, and pinons dotting the rolling hills. A huge part of the adventure was the drive. It is not far from Grants, and also the gorgeous Zuni and Ramah reservations. It is also near the Bandera Ice Caves and Volcano, which unfortunately was closed that day. Oh, well, it’s a good excuse for another visit to this area.