3 Best Sights in The Santa Fe Trail, Day Trips from Santa Fe

The ruins of New Mexico's largest American frontier-era fort sit on an empty windswept plain about a half-hour drive north of Las Vegas. It still echoes with the isolation surely felt by the soldiers stationed here between 1851 and 1890, when the fort was established to protect travelers and settlers along the Santa Fe Trail. It eventually became a military supply depot for the Southwest, but was eventually abandoned. The visitor center provides historical background about the fort and you can walk among the extensive ruins on your own or explore different parts of the grounds on a ranger tour (they're given throughout the year, but more often in the busier spring and fall seasons).

More than 250 known species—including eagles, sandhill cranes, hawks, and prairie falcons—travel the Central Flyway to this 8,672-acre area of marshes, native grasslands, and forested canyons. Here, where the Sangre de Cristo Mountains meet the Great Plains, the 1¾-mile-long Gallinas Nature Trail winds beside sandstone cliffs and ruins, and an 8-mile auto tour loops through the most picturesque habitats of the refuge (four-wheel-drive can be necessary following rain or snow). The visitor center leaves out free maps and bird species guides for visitors at all times.

The centerpiece of this national park is the ruins of Pecos, once a major Pueblo village with more than 1,100 rooms. About 2,500 people are thought to have lived in this structure, as high as five stories in places. Pecos, in a fertile valley between the Great Plains and the Rio Grande Valley, was a trading center centuries before the Spanish conquistadors visited in about 1540. The Spanish later returned to build two missions. The pueblo was abandoned in 1838, and its 17 surviving occupants moved to the Jémez Pueblo. Anglo travelers on the Santa Fe Trail observed the mission ruins with a great sense of fascination. You can view the mission ruins and the excavated pueblo on a 1¼-mile self-guided tour, a Civil War battlefield on a 2½-mile trail, and the small but outstanding visitor center museum containing photos, pottery, and artifacts from the pueblo. A half-mile south of the visitor center, the recently restored Kozlowski Trading Post is part of the park and contains exhibits on the Santa Fe Trail and other aspects of the park's rich history.