On Friday we visited Bandelier National Monument. “It preserves the homes and territory of the Ancestral Puebloans dating between 1150 and 1600, and the largest National Park Service CCC National Landmark District in the US. Bandelier was designated by President Wilson as a National Monument in 1916 and named for Adolph Bandelier, a Swiss-American anthropologist, who researched the cultures of the area and supported preservation of the site.”
Some of the dwellings at Bandelier were rock structures built on the canyon floor, and others were cavates, produced by voids in the volcanic tuff of the canyon wall and carved out further by the Puebloans. We climbed ladders to visit the cavates and Alcove House, a shelter cave 140’ above the canyon floor. Taylor completed the Bandelier junior ranger book and got another badge. We all had fun!
