Thursday Travel: Bandelier National Monument
The Bandelier National Monument at the Frijoles Canyon in New Mexico dates back more than 10,000 years.
These mountains views were captured through the car window.
The pink rock look much like sandstone, but it’s actually volcanic ash that compacted over time into a soft, crumbly rock call tuff.
Tuff is easily eroded by the action of wind and rain. Over time the exposed rock takes on “Swiss cheese” look. There you can see some of these “Swiss chesse” holes are pretty tiny.
It was an ideal place for Ancestral Pueblo people to settled, beautiful mountain views, lots of trees and resources, and a creek runs through.
Ancestral Pueblo people used the soft rock for building materials.
Climbing up a little higher, this is the view you get to see, where you can imagine how live was like for them.
Bandelier was designated by President Woodrow Wilson as a National Monument on February 11, 1916, and named for Adolph Bandelier, a Swiss-American anthropologist who researched the cultures of the area and supported preservation of the sites.
source: Western National Park Association
