See It yourself

Experience the rich and diverse cultural heritage of ancestral southeast New Mexico by visiting archaeological and cultural sites that are open to the public. Whether you are exploring the vast, sandy dunes at White Sands National Monument or going underground to cool off in the Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico offers a range of cultural experiences. 

As you get to know these places, either with the click of your mouse or on their hiking-trails and in their museums, you’ll find striking examples of human connection. Although the arid desert of southeast New Mexico is known for its heat and sparse vegetation, peoples have thrived here for millennia. You’ll see them in the petroglyphs pecked out of cliff faces, in the tools left lodged in mammoth bones, even in the fossilized footprints made thousands of years ago. Today these peoples remain here, both in the culture that they left behind and in their descendants, present-day Indigenous communities. 

On this page you will find information on sites that you can explore in person throughout New Mexico. As you visit these places we encourage you to look for the ancestral peoples and to respect the places that they’ve left behind. Visiting with respect can involve small gestures, like taking trash with you instead of leaving it on the ground. It also encompasses much greater actions, like giving gratitude to the people who lived their lives at these places. Respecting the sites themselves can mean leaving artifacts where you find them, and walking around architecture instead of on top of it. If in doubt about how to act at an ancestral site, the best rule of thumb is to act as if you are visiting a friend’s home. Be respectful, clean up after yourself, and be grateful to your hosts.