Sherwood Boulevard

Carved Trail Tsankawi Guided Hike Stop 16

~5 min drive

From this point forward, you will be walking in a trail carved into the volcanic tuff.  The rock is very soft and malleable.  It is very important to stay on the trail.  In just a very short time, our shoes can do more damage than many years of erosion.  Thank you for helping…

Soda Springs

~4 min drive

Moderate 8-mile hike to natural springs with 709 ft elevation gain.

More Than History Tsankawi Guided Hike Stop 1

~5 min drive

No Pueblo people live at Tsankawi today.  However, this place still contains tangible and intangible connections with the past for the descendants of the people who once occupied these canyons and mesas.  A petroglyph (image etched into rock) carved into the soft stone walls o…

Cuesta Colorada

~5 min drive

Easy 2.4-mile trail with gentle elevation gain near Cuesta Colorada.

Intro Tsankawi Guided Hike Stop 0

~5 min drive

Tsankawi is part of the ancestral lands of the modern pueblo of San Ildefonso.  Using the soft volcanic rock to construct houses and the flat open lands between mesas for farming, Ancestral Pueblo people called this place home in the 1400’s and 1500’s.  Life was not easy on th…

Soft Rock Pueblo Loop Trail Stop 10

~7 min drive

The cliff in front of you has numerous holes, some big and some small. These holes are created by wind and water erosion of the volcanic tuff we talked about earlier. Water freezes and thaws in the permeable rock breaking off big and small pieces (most are microscopic). Wind p…

First Cavate Pueblo Loop Trail Stop 11

~7 min drive

You have arrived at the first of three ladders you can climb into cavates (CAVE-eights), human excavated openings. Although sometimes used for housing, the main purpose of cavates was often food storage. Remember the Ancestral Pueblo people lived here for over 400 years and th…

Talus House Pueblo Loop Trail Stop 12

~7 min drive

This is Talus House, reconstructed in 1920 to show the structures that would have been found in front of many of the cavates when the Ancestral Pueblo people were still occupying the canyon. For many years park staff believed the reconstruction was inaccurate due to what appea…

Frijoles Canyon Pueblo Loop Trail Stop 13

~7 min drive

Stop and look out over the canyon. Does it look lush, and green compared to the mesa above it? As we discussed earlier this is a riparian area that has greater diversity of plants and wildlife than other nearby areas. Although much farming was done on the surrounding mesas som…

Cavate Pueblo Loop Trail Stop 14

~7 min drive

Have you notice anything different about the cavates you have entered by climbing ladders? They all have concrete floors. Without the concrete to protect them from our footwear, the natural cavate floors would have been worn deeply by our entering these significant features. R…