Bandelier & Puye Cliff Dwellings Guided Tour From Santa Fe

Bandelier National Monument preserves 33,677 acres of the Pajarito Plateau in the Jemez Mountains of Northern New Mexico, protecting one of the most extensive concentrations of Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites in the American Southwest. The monument's centerpiece is Frijoles Canyon, where volcanic tuff walls are honeycombed with cavates, petroglyphs mark the rock above, and the circular ruins of Tyuonyi pueblo sit on the canyon floor. The Ancestral Puebloans who settled here beginning around 1150 CE carved homes from the soft volcanic rock, built multi-story stone structures, farmed the floodplain of Frijoles Creek, and created a community that thrived for over 400 years before migrating to the Rio Grande Pueblos still inhabited today.

This full-day tour pairs Bandelier National Monument with Puye Cliff Dwellings, a National Historic Landmark on the Santa Clara Pueblo where descendant guides tell the story of their ancestors in their own words. The two sites are complementary: Puye gives you the Indigenous perspective directly from the people whose family history is written in the rock, while Bandelier National Monument gives you the canyon trails, the ladder climbs, and the archaeological depth of a major National Park Service site. Visiting both in a single day, in a small group with an expert guide and all logistics handled, is an experience that would be difficult to replicate on your own, especially given the coordination required between a tribal site and a federal monument.

This Bandelier National Monument tour is ideal for history lovers, archaeology enthusiasts, families with older children and teens, and anyone visiting Santa Fe who wants to go beyond the Plaza and see the landscape and cultures that shaped the region thousands of years before the Spanish arrived.