263 Best Sights in New Mexico, USA

The city's foremost outdoor draw, the BioPark comprises four distinct attractions: Aquarium, Botanic Garden, Zoo, and Tingley Beach. Verdant grounds are the setting for summer performances, the River of Lights brings crowds over the winter holidays, and exhibits like River Otters, Komodo Dragons, and the Sasebo Japanese Gardens have year-round appeal. The garden and aquarium are located together, just west of Old Town (admission gets you into both facilities) while the zoo is a short drive southeast, off 10th Street SW, and Tingley Beach (and its trout-stocked ponds) lies between. An electric shuttle connects them all.

Atop a 367-foot mesa that rises abruptly from the valley floor, Acoma Pueblo's terraced, multistory, multiunit Sky City is like no other pueblo structure. It's one of the oldest continually inhabited spots in North America, with portions believed to be more than 1,500 years old. Captain Hernando de Alvarado, a member of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado's expedition of 1540, was the first European to see Acoma. He reported that he had "found a rock with a village on top, the strongest position ever seen in the world." The Spanish eventually conquered the Acoma people and brutally compelled them to build San Estéban del Rey, the immense adobe church that stands to this day. Native American laborers cut the massive vigas for the church's ceiling 30 mi away on Mt. Taylor and physically carried them back to the mesa.

About a dozen families live at the mesa-top pueblo full time, with most other Acomas living on Native American land nearby and returning only in summer and for celebrations, such as the feast day of St. Stephen (September 2), and Christmas mass (both are open to the public). Acoma's artisans are known for their thin-walled pottery, hand-painted with intricate black-and-white or polychrome geometrical patterns.

Once you park at the mesa base, plan to spend time in the superb Haak'u Museum at the Sky City Cultural Center. Changing exhibits explore traditional and contemporary arts, and are perfectly set in this modernist interpretation of traditional pueblo forms, with fine sandstone detailing and glass panels prepared to evoke historic mica windows. Visitation on the mesa top is by an hour-long guided tour; you're whisked by van up a steep road from behind the center and then led about the mesa community on foot (allow extra time if you choose to walk back down instead, via the ancient staircase carved into the side of the mesa). An Acoma guide will point out kivas, hornos, and unforgettable views toward their sacred sites of Enchanted Mesa and Mt. Taylor, and describe pueblo history in-depth, as well as direct you to artisan displays throughout the village. (Note: the terrain can be uneven; heeled shoes or flip-flops are not advised.) There's no electricity or running water in the village, but you can see cars parked outside many homes—one wonders what it must have been like to visit Acoma before the road was constructed in 1969. Open hours vary slightly, depending on the weather. Videotaping, sketching, and painting are prohibited, and a permit is required for still photography. Note that the pueblo prohibits photography of the church interior and exterior as well as the adjoining cemetery. As at all indigenous locales, ask permission before photographing residents or their artwork. Regroup back at Haak'u and browse the gallery gift shop and bookstore or enjoy blue-corn pancakes or a grilled chicken wrap with green-chile guacamole at the cozy Y'aak'a (Corn) Café. There is shuttle service available if you are staying at the Sky City Hotel/Casino (888/759–2489). Open hours are subject to tribal activities or weather conditions; it is best to check their online calendar or call ahead.

In a modern, light-filled space, the Albuquerque Museum serves up a brilliantly curated selection of contemporary art from the museum's own Southwestern artists–centric collections and world-class touring shows; it also presents illuminating shows with regionally topical themes. The must-see Common Ground galleries represent an important permanent collection of primarily 20th-century paintings, all by world-renowned artists with a New Mexico connection; a changing rotation of 19th- and 20th-century photographs from the museum's extensive local archive lines the museum's walkway halls. Other spaces dig even deeper into compelling aspects of Albuquerque and regional history.

The Sculpture Garden contains more than 50 contemporary works by an internationally known roster of artists that includes Basia Irland and Fritz Scholder; Nora Naranjo-Morse's spiral land-art piece resonates deeply in a place defined by water and land-rights issues. Visitors may pick up a self-guided Sculpture Garden map or come for the free (with admission) docent-led tours at 11 am Wednesday and Saturday (March through November); docent-led tours of the galleries, also free, are held daily at 2 pm, year-round.

The Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art, which started as a personal collection evolving from founder late Don Anderson's patronage of artists, since the 1960s has become an important showcase of contemporary art. This 22,000-square-foot, salon-style museum exhibits sculpture, painting, print, and textiles, and it continues to evolve. Among the 500-plus pieces is an impressive collection of the dramatic, large-scale fiberglass sculptures by the late El Paso artist Luis Jiménez. The remarkable and competitive Roswell Artist-in-Residence program, whose participants' work feeds the ongoing collection, is operated by the museum's foundation and provides a home, studio, supplies and a stipend to participating artists.

About 8,000 diving permits are issued per year for folks who strap on tanks and plunge into the 80-foot-deep artesian spring–fed pool at the Blue Hole, which is also open for public swimming during daylight hours (no fee). Cliff diving is great fun here, as is snorkeling and coming face to face with the many koi and goldfish that have been deposited here over the years.

Stella Salazar runs the dive shop (575/472–3370) adjacent to the Blue Hole; hours are generally restricted to the weekends, although the pool is open seven days a week. Tanks, air, weight belts, and a few other basics are available there. Weekly dive permits are $20; annual permits are $50.

Hundreds of different types of birds, including snow geese, cranes, herons, and eagles, can be spotted from viewing platforms and directly through your car window at the popular Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. Besides serving as a rest stop for migrating birds, the Bosque del Apache also shelters mule deer, turkeys, quail, and other wildlife. Photo opportunities abound on the 12-mile auto loop tour; you can also hike through arid shrub land or bike through the refuge or take a van tour. October and November are the months the cottonwoods show their colors. In winter months, the refuge echoes with the haunting cries of whooping cranes flocking for the evening. Snow geese are so thick on lakes at times that shores are white with feathers washed ashore. Whether you're a bird-watcher or not, it is well worth bringing binoculars or a spotting scope to get some idea of how many varieties of birds land here (nearly 400 species have been spotted since 1940). The Festival of the Cranes () in mid-November draws thousands of people.

The Branigan Cultural Center, in a striking 1935 Pueblo Revival building embellished inside with murals by Tom Lea, offers compelling programs covering such topics as the 1942–1964 Bracero Program (a Mexican guest workers initiative), or a reflection on Frida Kahlo's later years through rarely seen photographs, along with rotating exhibits covering local history and culture.The city-run Branigan is a focal point—along with the Las Cruces Museum of Art next door—of the revitalized downtown.

Within this user-friendly facility at the top of an escarpment, a 75-seat theater offers engrossing films and ranger programs about the different types of caves. Exhibits offer a primer on bats, geology, wildlife, and the early tribes and settlers that once lived in and passed through the Carlsbad Caverns area. Friendly rangers staff an information desk, where maps are distributed and tickets are sold. A gift shop, café, and bookstore also are on the premises.

This iconic cathedral, a block east of the Plaza, is one of the rare significant departures from the city's nearly ubiquitous Pueblo architecture. Construction was begun in 1869 by Jean Baptiste Lamy, Santa Fe's first archbishop, who worked with French architects and Italian stonemasons. The Romanesque style was popular in Lamy's native home in southwest France. The cleric was sent by the Catholic Church to the Southwest to influence the religious practices of its native population and is buried in the crypt beneath the church's high altar. He was the inspiration behind Willa Cather's novel Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927). In 2005 Pope Benedict XVI declared St. Francis the "cradle of Catholicism" in the Southwestern United States, and upgraded the status of the building from mere cathedral to cathedral basilica—one of just 36 in the country.

A small adobe chapel on the northeast side of the cathedral, the remnant of an earlier church, embodies the Hispanic architectural influence absent from the cathedral itself. The chapel's Nuestra Señora de la Paz (Our Lady of Peace), popularly known as La Conquistadora, the oldest Madonna statue in the United States, accompanied Don Diego de Vargas on his reconquest of Santa Fe in 1692, a feat attributed to the statue's spiritual intervention. Each new season, the faithful adorn the statue with a new dress. Take a close look at the keystone in the main doorway arch: it has a Hebrew tetragrammaton on it. It's widely speculated that Bishop Lamy had this carved and placed to honor the Jewish merchants of Santa Fe who helped provide necessary funds for the construction of the church.

The roads accessing Chaco Canyon, home to Chaco Culture National Historical Park, do a fine job of deterring exploration: they are mostly unpaved and can be very muddy and/or icy during inclement weather (particularly NM 57 from the south). The silver lining is that the roads leading in—and the lack of gas stations, food concessions, or hotels once you get off the highway—keep this archaeological treasure free from the overcrowding that can mar other national park visits: only about 85,000 people visit annually, compared with at least 10 times that number to Canyon de Chelly, which is 80 mi away as the crow flies.

Once past the rough roads you'll see one of the most amazingly well-preserved and fascinating ruin sites on the continent. The excavations here have uncovered what was once the administrative and economic core of a vast community—the locus of a system of over 400 mi of ancient roads that have been identified to date. While there is evidence that people lived in the canyon at least since 400 AD, the majority of these roads, and the buildings and dwellings that make up the canyon site, were constructed from 850 to 1250 AD. Several of the ancient structures—such as an immense Great Kiva, Casa Rinconada, or Pueblo Bonito—are simply astounding, if only for the extreme subtlety and detail of their precisely cut and chinked sandstone masonry. But there's still a shroud of mystery surrounding them. Did 5,000 people really once live here, as some archaeologists believe? Or was Chaco maintained solely as a ceremonial and trade center? The more that's learned about the prehistoric roadways and the outlying sites that they connect, or wondrous creations such as the Sun Dagger —an arrangement of stone slabs positioned to allow a spear of sunlight to pass through and bisect a pair of spiral petroglyphs precisely at each summer solstice—the more questions arise about the sophistication of the people that created them.

At the visitor center you can meander through a small museum on Chaco culture, peruse the bookstore, buy bottled water (but no food), and inquire about hiking permits. From here you can drive (or bike) along the 9-mi paved inner loop road to the various trailheads for the ruins; at each you can find a small box containing a detailed self-guided tour brochure (a 50¢ donation per map is requested). Many of the 13 ruins at Chaco require a significant hike, but a few of the most impressive are just a couple of hundred yards off the road. The stargazing here is spectacular: there is a small observatory and numerous telescopes, which are brought out for star parties from April through October; ask about the schedule at the front desk. Pueblo Bonito is the largest and most dramatic of the Chaco Canyon ruins, a massive semicircular "great house" that once stood four stories in places and held some 600 rooms (and 40 kivas). The park trail runs alongside its fine outer mortar-and-sandstone walls, up a hill that allows a great view over the entire canyon, and then right through the ruin and several rooms. It's the most substantial of the structures—the ritualistic and cultural center of a Chacoan culture that may once have comprised some 150 settlements.

This 5,000-square-foot art space in the ever-transforming Baca Street neighborhood presents itself as both museum and art gallery. It is owned by the duo behind Turner Carroll Gallery, who aim to present eclectic and significant artwork from around the world. Their global relationships facilitate and attract influential stars in the art world to exhibit, speak, and share with like-minded aficionados in Santa Fe.

When you see the imposing 200-foot-high sandstone bluff that served as a rest stop for Indians, explorers, soldiers, and pioneers, you can understand how El Morro ("the Headland") got its name. The bluff is the famous Inscription Rock, where wayfarers stopped to partake of a waterhole at its base and left behind messages, signatures, and petroglyphs carved into the soft sandstone. The paved Inscription Trail makes a quick ½-mi round-trip from the visitor center and passes that historic water source and numerous inscriptions. Although El Morro is justly renowned for Inscription Rock, try to allow an extra 90 minutes or so to venture along the spectacular, moderately strenuous 2-mi (round-trip) Headland Trail, which meanders past the excavated edge of an extensive field of late-13th-century pueblo ruins, cuts along the precarious rim of a deep box canyon, and affords panoramic views across the Zuni Mountains and El Malpais. The monument's compact museum chronicles 700 years of human history in this region.

In the amphitheater at the Natural Entrance (off a short trail from the main parking lot) a ranger discusses the park's batty residents before the creatures begin their sundown exodus. The bats aren't on any predictable schedule, so times are a little iffy. Ideally, viewers will first hear the bats preparing to exit, followed by a vortex of black specks swirling out of the cave mouth in search of dinner against the darkening sky. When conditions are favorable, hundreds of thousands of bats will soar off over the span of half an hour or longer.

In a striking, high-ceilinged space, EVOKE ranks among the more diverse contemporary galleries in town. It veers away from the standard Southwestern focus seen in many Santa Fe galleries and more toward modern pieces that evoke (wink, wink) conversation and personal reflection. Single artist and group exhibitions rotate through the schedule, featuring creatives from around the globe. Intriguing lectures on varied topics also draw crowds.

If you're in town on a Wednesday or Saturday, don't miss one of the Southwest's largest and most impressive farmers markets, where some 300 vendors sell produce, handcrafted items, baked goods, and even geodes and fossils along a lively seven-block stretch of the city's lively downtown. Mingle with the locals and enjoy the scene, which is open between 8:30 am and 1 pm.

In 1945 Georgia O'Keeffe bought a large, dilapidated late-18th-century Spanish-colonial adobe compound just off the plaza in Abiquiú. Upon the 1946 death of her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz, she left New York City and began dividing her time permanently between this home, which figured prominently in many of her works, and one in nearby Ghost Ranch. The patio is featured in Black Patio Door (1955) and Patio with Cloud (1956). O'Keeffe died in 1986 at the age of 98 and left provisions in her will to ensure that the property's houses would never be public monuments.

Highly engaging 75- to 90-minute tours are available by advance reservation through Santa Fe's Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, which owns the house and operates the tours from early March through late November. Costs range from $60 for a standard tour to $200 for "Pita's Tour," which is led by Pita Lopez, who served as O'Keeffe's former secretary and companion and shares fascinating first-hand anecdotes about the artist. All of the tours focus on O’Keeffe’s distinctly modern decorating style, which drew on Indigenous and Spanish influences. Tours depart by shuttle bus from the welcome center beside the Abiquiu Inn. Book well ahead in summer, as these tours fill up quickly.

One of many East Coast artists who visited New Mexico in the first half of the 20th century, Georgia O'Keeffe, today known as the "Mother of American Modernism," returned to live and paint in northern New Mexico for the last half of her life, eventually emerging as the demigoddess of Southwestern art. At this intimate museum dedicated to her work, you'll find how O'Keeffe's innovative view of the landscape is captured in From the Plains, inspired by her memory of the Texas plains, and in Jimson Weed, a study of one of her favorite plants; additional highlights include selections from O'Keeffe's early days as an illustrator, abstract pieces from her time in New York City, and iconic works featuring floating skulls, flowers, and bones. Special exhibitions with O'Keeffe's modernist peers, as well as contemporary artists, are on view throughout the year—many of these are exceptional, and just as interesting as the museum's permanent collection, which numbers some 3,000 works (although not all are on display as the museum is surprisingly small). The museum also manages a visitor center and tours of O'Keeffe's famous home and studio in Abiquiú, about an hour north of Santa Fe.

At Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument the mystery of the Mogollon (muh-gee-yohn) people's short-lived occupation of the deeply recessed caves high above the canyon floor may never be resolved. But the finely detailed stone dwellings they left behind stand in silent testimony to the challenges as well as the beauty of the surrounding Gila Wilderness. Built and inhabited for a span of barely two generations, from 1280 to the early 1300s AD, its 42 rooms are tucked into six natural caves that are reached via a rugged one-mile loop trail that ascends 180 feet from the trail head. Constructed from the same pale volcanic stone as the cliffs themselves, the rooms are all but camouflaged until you are about a half-mile along the trail. You can contemplate, from a rare close-up vantage point, the keyhole doorways that punctuate the dwelling walls and gaze out upon a ponderosa pine- and cottonwood-forested terrain that looks much like the one the Mogollon people inhabited seven centuries ago. The wealth of pottery, yucca sandals, tools, and other artifacts buried here were picked clean by the late 1800s—dispersed to private collectors. But the visitor center has a small museum with books and other materials about the wilderness, its trails, and the Mogollon. It's a 2-mile drive from the visitor center to the Dwellings trail head (and other nearby trails); there are interesting pictographs to be seen on the wheelchair-accessible Trail to the Past.

Allow a good 2 hours from Silver City to the Cliff Dwellings via NM 15 or via NM 35; though longer in mileage, the NM 35 route is an easier ride.

If you can spare the time, spend the night at one of the mountain inns close to the dwellings to maximize your time in the park.

The museum, a Smithsonian affiliate, houses the Anne C. Stradling Collection of more than 10,000 artworks and objects related to the horse—paintings, drawings, and bronzes by master artists; saddles from Mexico, China, and the Pony Express; carriages and wagons; a horse-drawn grain thresher; and clothing worn by Native Americans and cowboys. An indoor children's exhibit offers kids the chance to climb and touch an adobe home, a tepee, a wagon, as well as lots of other hands-on activities.

Sitting just a block from the Plaza, this fascinating museum is part of the esteemed Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and contains the largest collection—some 7,500 works—of contemporary Native American art in the United States. The paintings, photography, sculptures, prints, and traditional crafts were created by past and present students and teachers. In the 1960s and 1970s, it blossomed into the nation's premier center for Native American arts and its alumni represent almost 600 tribes around the country. The museum continues to showcase the cultural and artistic vibrancy of Indigenous people, helping to expand what is still an often limited public perception of what "Indian" art is and can be. Be sure to step out back to the beautiful sculpture garden. Artist Fritz Scholder taught here, as did sculptor Allan Houser. Among their disciples were the painter T. C. Cannon and celebrated local sculptor and painter Dan Namingha.

Depending on your point of view, the International UFO Museum and Research Center will either seem like a display of only-in-America kitsch or a real opportunity to examine UFO documentation and other phenomena involving extraterrestrials. This homespun nonprofit facility is surprisingly low-tech—some of the displays look like they've seen previous duty on B-movie sets (the museum is, coincidentally, inside an old movie house). The blowups of newspaper stories about the 1947 Roswell crash, its fallout, and 1950s UFO mania make interesting reading, and you can view the videotaped recollections of residents who say they saw the crash firsthand. The gift shop sells all manner of souvenirs depicting wide-eyed extraterrestrials, along with books and videos. Though some of the exhibits are whimsical, the portion of the museum devoted to research accumulates serious written collections and investigations of reported UFOs. The city hosts AlienFest (575/914–8017) over the first weekend of July each year.

Watching the Isotopes (a sparkling Triple A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies) at this sweet 13,279-seat ballpark is always great fun, and with the New Mexico United pro soccer team playing here now as well, there’s yet more opportunity to join a rousing crowd while the setting sun vividly colors the Sandias to the east. The 'Topes season runs April through September while the United play March or April through October.

Founded in Baltimore in 1995, owner Dianna Lennon, an educator and advocate for Ukrainian art, opened this space in Santa Fe in 2003. Originally called the Art of Russia, she has since changed the name to spotlight generations of influential Ukrainian artists. A native of Kyiv herself, her focus is on contemporary artists and old masters from her home country.

As you head south on NM 518 toward Las Vegas, be sure to stop in the La Cueva Historic District. Among the buildings here, which date to the 1850s, is a stone-walled mill that supplied flour to the soldiers of Fort Union. Pioneer rancher Vicente Romero's mill also supplied power to the area until 1950; at what is now called the Salman Ranch, you can pick raspberries mid-August to mid-October, or buy fresh berries, raspberry jam and vinegar, and dried flowers and herbs at the original La Cueva Ranch Store. Brilliantly colored wildflower gardens, and homemade tamales, burgers, and raspberry sundaes served at the café draw families during "U Pick" raspberry season. The historic district's San Rafael Church, dating from the 1870s, is also worth a look.

One of the most impressive surviving Spanish Colonial houses in the Southwest, the Hacienda was built between 1804 and 1820 on the west bank of the Rio Pueblo and served as a community refuge during Comanche and Apache raids. Its thick walls, which have few windows, surround two central courtyards. Don Antonio Severino Martínez was a farmer and trader; his hacienda was the final stop along El Camino Real (the Royal Road), the trade route the Spanish established between Mexico City and New Mexico. The restored period rooms here contain textiles, spiritual art, and fine handcrafted pieces from the early 19th century. Be sure to stop in the gift shop, which features many renowned Taos artists, books on the region, and more. Visit in June for the hacienda's American mountain man event, or in September for their well-loved trading fair.

This longtime Santa Fe art dealer is a leader in both contemporary and modern art, with a dramatic 14,000-square-foot neo-industrial building across from the farmers' market. You'll also find a dazzling collection of abstract sculptures, photography, and paintings by up-and-coming regional and international talents.

The sculptor Walter De Maria created Lightning Field, a work of land art composed of 400 stainless-steel poles of varying heights (the average is about 20 feet, although they create a horizontal plane) arranged in a rectangular grid over 1 mile by ½ mile of flat, isolated terrain, and installed in 1977. Groups of up to six people are permitted to stay overnight from May through October—the only way you can experience the artwork—at a rustic on-site 1930s cabin. Fees include dinner and breakfast, and range from $600 (May to June, September to October) to $1,000 (July to August) per group; additional people incur extra fees. Dia Art Foundation administers Lightning Field, shuttling visitors from Quemado to the sculpture, which is on private land 45 minutes to the northeast. Thunder-and-lightning storms are most common from July to mid-September; book way ahead for visits during this time. If you're lucky, you'll see flashes you'll never forget (though lightning isn't required for the sculpture to be stunning in effect).

More preserve than traditional zoo, this park contains an impressive collection of plants and animals native to the Chihuahuan Desert. The Desert Arboretum has hundreds of exotic cacti and succulents, and the Living Desert Zoo is home to mountain lions, javelinas, deer, elk, bobcats, bison, and a black bear. Nocturnal exhibits let you view the area's nighttime wildlife, a walk-through aviary houses birds of prey, and there's a reptile exhibit. The park also sponsors some great educational events. Though there are shaded rest areas, restrooms, and water fountains, in summer it's more comfortable to visit in the morning before the desert oven heats up. The expansive view from here is the best in town.

Located atop Museum Hill, this museum delights visitors of all ages with its permanent collection of more than 130,000 objects from about 100 countries. In the Girard Wing, you'll find thousands of amazingly inventive handmade objects such as a tin Madonna, a devil made from bread dough, dolls from around the world, and miniature village scenes. The Hispanic Heritage Wing rotates exhibitions of art from throughout Latin America, dating from New Mexico's Spanish-colonial period (1598–1821) to the present. The exhibits in the Neutrogena Wing rotate, showing subjects ranging from outsider art to the magnificent quilts of Gee's Bend. Lloyd's Treasure Chest, the wing's innovative basement section, provides a behind-the-scenes look at the museum's permanent collection and explores the question of what exactly constitutes folk art. The innovative Gallery of Conscience explores topics at the intersection of folk art and social justice. Each exhibition also includes educational activities for both kids and adults. Allow time to visit the outstanding gift shop and bookstore.

A showpiece for the city, and a showcase for Hispanic culture in Albuquerque's historic Barelas neighborhood, this beautifully designed space contains a vibrant art museum, multiple performance venues, a restaurant, a fresco-lined Torreón (tower) depicting the span of Hispanic (and pre-Hispanic) history, a 10,000-volume genealogical research center and library, and an education center. Its acoustically superb Roy E. Disney Center for Performing Arts and smaller Albuquerque Journal Theatre host ballet and flamenco performances, a bilingual film series, traditional Spanish and New Mexican music, the famed world music festival ¡Globalquerque!, Opera Southwest, and more. Exhibits at its museum include works by local artists as well as internationally known names and often feature traditional and contemporary craftwork. A vintage WPA-era school contains the library and La Fonda del Bosque restaurant, which features Latin fusion fare indoors and out on the patio.