Best Hiking Trails at White Sands
Trails can be on sand or a boardwalk—but dogs must be leashed. WHITE SANDS IN SOME WAYS a pathless place. Visitors are welcome to walk over any stretch of bare sand dunes. But these three hikes can…
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Category: Parks
Destinations: Chaco Canyon
Above: Seen from the mesa top, Pueblo Bonito's living spaces and ceremonial kivas give a hint of the region's size and importance. Photographs by Minesh Bacrania. IT FEELS UNFORGIVING OUT HERE. So…
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Our Stone Age Heroes
Above: David Eck gestures toward the arroyo where history was discovered. Photographs by Minesh Bacrania. HUMANS HAVEN'T REALLY CHANGED much since the last ice age ended and nomadic hunters roamed…
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The Story Behind Inscription Rock
FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, people have found their way to a small pond fed by a reliable spring below a towering cliff. There, they rested, watered their horses, and camped under a diamond-specked sky…
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Carlsbad Caverns Reveal More of Their Secrets
THE RESEARCHERS UNFOLD AND STEADY the lanky yellow limbs of a tripod, then attach a camera, a nondescript gray plastic case with a big glass eye. One of them takes out a stylus and taps tiny boxes on…
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Etchings on the Heart
The petroglyphs of Salinas Pueblo Missions tell an ancient story. SINCE MY FIRST visit to Mountainair and the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument in the late 1960s, the area’s reddish sandstone…
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Park Central
Upward bound at Bandelier. Photograph by Kennan Harvey. On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the act creating the National Park Service, which celebrates its centennial with free…
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