Cliffs / by Karie Luidens

Gila Cliff Dwellings.JPG

The morning after camping: a hike among the Gila Cliff Dwellings to glimpse how people slept, worked, gathered, and ate some eight hundred years ago.

For thousands of years, groups of nomadic people used the caves of the Gila River as temporary shelter. In the late 1200's, people of the Mogollon Culture decided it would be a good place to call home. They built rooms, crafted pottery and raised children in the cliff dwellings for about twenty years. Then the Mogollon moved on, leaving the walls for us as a glimpse into the past.