Discover My Mountain: Bandelier National Monument
Just a 30-minute drive from Los Alamos, Bandelier National Monument offers visitors an excellent opportunity to explore Ancestral Pueblo dwellings, broad mesas, and steep-walled canyons, where ladders provide access to small-carved dwellings built in natural recesses. Bandelier has 33,000 acres of designated wilderness, 70+ miles of hiking trails, and a variety of outdoor activities, including hiking, cross-country skiing, bird-watching and camping.
Bandelier protects Ancestral Pueblo archaeological sites, a beautiful landscape, and the country’s largest Civilian Conservation Corps National Landmark District. From mid-May through mid-October, Los Alamos County provides Atomic City Transit shuttles to the Park from the White Rock Visitor Center. Shuttles run daily beginning at 9am and are handicap accessible. Handicap vehicles are also allowed to drive into the Park.
For more information about Bandelier, visit nps.gov/band. To learn about the many more attractions in and near Los Alamos go to visitlosalamos.org. Los Alamos is Where Discoveries Are Made!
Bandelier National Monument
On this segment of Wonders of the West we visit Bandelier National Monument and get a personal tour with Cecilia Shields, park ranger.
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Bandelier National Monument Hikes, 1987, Slide Show
Memories from hiking in the Bandelier National Monument near Los Alamos in 1987. We hiked the 15 miles path with Jindra several times. There are 33 crossings of the stream. Once we hiked with the whole family to the Indian sacred Stone lion shrine.
Vzpomínky na výlety do Bandelier National Monument blízko Los Alamos v roce 1987. Několikrát jsme byli s Jindrou na 15ti mílové tůře podél potoka vzhůru. Musí se přejít 33 lávek. S celou rodinou jsme byli u indiánského oltáře Kamenný lev.
Bandelier National Monument New Mexico Walking Tour
Bandelier National Monument is a 33,677-acre (13,629 ha) United States National Monument near Los Alamos in Sandoval and Los Alamos Counties, New Mexico. The monument preserves the homes and territory of the Ancestral Puebloans of a later era in the Southwest. Most of the pueblo structures date to two eras, dating between 1150 and 1600 AD.
The Monument is 50 square miles (130 km2) of the Pajarito Plateau, on the slopes of the Jemez Volcanic field in the Jemez Mountains. Over 70% of the Monument is wilderness, with over one mile elevation change, from about 5,000 feet (1,500 m) along the Rio Grande to over 10,000 feet (3,000 m) at the peak of Cerro Grande on the rim of the Valles Caldera, providing for a wide range of life zones and wildlife habitats. There are three miles of road, and more than 70 miles of hiking trails. The Monument protects Ancestral Pueblo archeological sites, a diverse and scenic landscape, and the country's largest National Park Service Civilian Conservation Corps National Landmark District.
Bandelier was designated by President Woodrow Wilson as a National Monument on February 11, 1916, and named for Adolph Bandelier, a Swiss-American anthropologist who researched the cultures of the area and supported preservation of the sites. The park infrastructure was developed in the 1930s by crews of the Civilian Conservation Corps and is a National Historic Landmark for its well-preserved architecture. The National Park Service cooperates with surrounding Pueblos, other federal agencies, and state agencies to manage the park.
Wikipedia
#WalkingTours
Bandelier NM, Climbed 140' of wooden ladders!
Bandelier National Monument once home of ancestral Pueblo people. Here you can still feel their spirit while sitting quietly on a bench overlooking the canyon or by climbing the wooden ladders to their ceremonial cave and house dwellings.
Welcome to our YouTube channel, Follow Your Wanderlust! Where we share some of our adventures, work camping tips and favorite spots.
We are Anja and Bob and we have been together for 28 years, we both have been born with the Wanderlust Gene and can't get enough of wandering and exploring this beautiful world. We have lived in California, New Mexico, Colorado and Hawaii, but have wandered many states and countries. We are Full-Time RV-ers and travel and work camp in a 2010, Winnebago View 24A Diesel Sprinter. We like to bring our 2012 Jeep Wrangler unlimited with us to explore where the RV can't go. We are not retired yet so we have to work on the road, we work camp at National parks, Forest Service and State parks and design some t-shirts and stickers and make some jewelry that are inspired by our travels. We will be selling those on our new website soon. We enjoy boon docking in nature or dry camping off grid along the ocean, in deserts and in the mountains. Our other passion is searching for treasures, one of those is a real Treasure Chest hidden by a fascinating gentleman named Forrest Fenn. We have been searching since 2013 and have filmed a few of our searches for you, so you can come along for the Thrill Of The Chase. Thank you for Watching and Subscribing to our YouTube channel, you can also follow us on our Facebook Page Follow Our Wanderlust and our Instagram Follow Your Wanderlust.
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Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico
The Pueblo people have lived in the American Southwest for many centuries. Archeologists think they are descended from nomadic hunting and gathering people who came into the region 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.
The Pueblo culture originated in the Four Corners Area (where New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado meet), but it was not uniform from group to group.
Cultural differences, over time and from place to place, are reflected in such surviving remnants as architecture and pottery.
Early archeologists, studying the old dwellings for clues to their former inhabitants, adopted the Navajo term Anasazi to refer to the ancestors of Pueblo people before the coming of the Spanish. The ancient people of the Bandelier area, like Puebloan ancestors elsewhere, were farmers, who grew maize (corn), beans, and squash.
They supplemented their diets with native plants and by hunting and trapping deer, rabbits, squirrels, other mammals, and birds. They made clothing from animal skins and traded for cotton, which they wove into garments. They ingeniously made winter blankets from fibers of the yucca plant interwoven with turkey feathers or strips of rabbit skin.
Tools, including a wide variety of axes, mauls, and knives, were fashioned from animal bones, wood, and such local stone as obsidian and basalt. The people obtained other items, such as shell, turquoise, and parrots, through trade networks that ranged as far as central Mexico and Baja California.
The Puebloan ancestors occupied the Bandelier area for nearly 500 years. With less than half the monument surveyed, more than 2,400 sites have been located, but not all sites were inhabited at the same time.
For generations the people lived in small, scattered settlements, each consisting of perhaps only one or two families. Then from about A.D. 1150 to 1325, sometimes called the Rio Grande Coalition Period, the population increased. People began coming together in larger groups and, by the end of the period, villages (pueblos) often included as many as 40 rooms.
The following two and a half centuries, called the Rio Grande Classic Period, were characterized by fewer and larger pueblos, some exceeding 600 rooms, and by the prevalence of very small structures that archeologists call field houses and believe show seasonal dispersal to agricultural fields. Ceremonial rooms called kivas were up to three times larger in classic times and may reflect a changing role in ritual or social life.
The Village of TyuonyiThe pueblo of Tyuonyi and its adjacent cave dwellings in Bandelier are examples from the Rio Grande Classic Period, which ended in the late 1500s when the Spanish colonized New Mexico, bringing immense change to the American Southwest.
The modern Pueblo people have oral traditions that link them to the past, but no written record existed before the coming of the Spanish. Archeologists trying to decipher the relationships of modern pueblo villages to various early sites are often puzzled. Differences in pottery suggest that the people who lived in the part of Bandelier called Tsankawi were different from the people who lived in the rest of the monument.
Today, the Puebloans immediately to the north and east of Bandelier speak Tewa while those to the south speak Keres. What was the relationship between the people of these language groups in ancestral times? The dwellings in Bandelier may hold the answer.
Santa Clara Pueblo Fire Relief Benefit
Tribal member Lucretia Williams invites you to attend the Santa Clara Fire Relief Golf Tournament aimed at raising funds to aid the Santa Clara Pueblo as it deals with the imminent danger of flooding and destruction of its aboriginal homelands by the Las Conchas Fire.
Map shows extent of Las Conchas fire
Based on the latest available information, here is a graphical look at the area burned by the Las Conchas Fire
Los Alamos Laboratory | Wikipedia audio article
This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
Los Alamos Laboratory
Listening is a more natural way of learning, when compared to reading. Written language only began at around 3200 BC, but spoken language has existed long ago.
Learning by listening is a great way to:
- increases imagination and understanding
- improves your listening skills
- improves your own spoken accent
- learn while on the move
- reduce eye strain
Now learn the vast amount of general knowledge available on Wikipedia through audio (audio article). You could even learn subconsciously by playing the audio while you are sleeping! If you are planning to listen a lot, you could try using a bone conduction headphone, or a standard speaker instead of an earphone.
You can find other Wikipedia audio articles too at:
You can upload your own Wikipedia articles through:
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
- Socrates
SUMMARY
=======
The Los Alamos Laboratory, also known as Project Y, was a secret laboratory established by the Manhattan Project and operated by the University of California during World War II. Its mission was to design and build the first atomic bombs. Robert Oppenheimer was its first director, from 1943 to December 1945, when he was succeeded by Norris Bradbury. For scientists to freely discuss their work while preserving security, the laboratory was located in a remote part of New Mexico. The wartime laboratory occupied buildings that had once been part of the Los Alamos Ranch School.
The development effort initially concentrated on a gun-type fission weapon using plutonium called Thin Man. In April 1944, the Los Alamos Laboratory determined that the rate of spontaneous fission in plutonium bred in a nuclear reactor was too great due to the presence of plutonium-240 and would cause a predetonation, a nuclear chain reaction before the core was fully assembled. Oppenheimer then reorganized the laboratory and orchestrated an all-out and ultimately successful effort on an alternative design proposed by John von Neumann, an implosion-type nuclear weapon, which was called Fat Man. A variant of the gun-type design known as Little Boy was developed using uranium-235.
Chemists at the Los Alamos Laboratory developed methods of purifying uranium and plutonium, the latter a metal that only existed in microscopic quantities when Project Y began. Its metallurgists found that plutonium had unexpected properties, but were nonetheless able to cast it into metal spheres. The laboratory built the Water Boiler, an aqueous homogeneous reactor, the third reactor in the world to become operational. It also researched the Super, a hydrogen bomb that would use a fission bomb to ignite a nuclear fusion reaction in deuterium and tritium.
The Fat Man design was tested in the Trinity nuclear test in July 1945. Project Y personnel formed pit crews and assembly teams for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and participated in the bombing as weaponeers and observers. After the war ended, the laboratory supported the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll. A new Z Division was created to control testing, stockpiling and bomb assembly activities, which were concentrated at Sandia Base. The Los Alamos Laboratory became Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in 1947.
Albert Bartlett's Interview
Albert Bartlett worked with mass spectrometers at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. He was part of the group that photographed the Operations Crossroads nuclear tests in the Bikini Atoll after the war. In this interview, he recalls his time at Los Alamos and his colleagues, including Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin, who would both die of criticality accidents. He discusses the significance of the colloquia that allowed scientists to share their research on the project. He also recalls funs time including skiing on Sawyer’s Hill, hiking, and dorm parties that used scientific materials to make the punch.
For the interview transcript:
Episode 1121 | Our Land: After the Fires Revisited
Six years ago this summer, the Las Conchas wildfire burned 156,000 acres in the Jemez Mountains. The effects of that fire are still visible on the landscape today. And changes in the forest will continue to be seen for generations.
Las Conchas burned over 60 percent of Bandelier National Monument. The park and nearby pueblos also experienced major flooding in the years afterwards. Thousands of acres of ponderosa and mixed conifer forest in the mountains have since transitioned into shrubs and grasslands. Scientists know that fire was an important part of the landscape for a millennia. Fires would have burned through this area every 5-7 years, according to tree ring chronologies. Due to many factors, including a history of fire suppression and a warming climate, fires like Las Conchas burned with high intensity and high severity in recent decades.
In July we began a new series on New Mexico in Focus. Correspondent Laura Paskus has been examining a different environmental issue each month on “Our Land: New Mexico’s Environmental Past, Present and Future.”
The changes we learn about in this segment aren’t unique to the Jemez Mountains. Scientists and land managers are learning lessons that can be shared across the western United States.
Ben Diven's Interview
Ben Diven discusses helping set up Los Alamos for the Manhattan Project and working on instrumentation for the atomic bomb. He speaks highly of J. Robert Oppenheimer's leadership abilities and the colloquium Oppenheimer began to allow all the scientists at Los Alamos to discuss problems and exchange ideas.
For the interview transcript:
Ellen Bradbury Reid's Interview
Ellen Bradbury Reid moved to Los Alamos in the summer of 1944 when her father was hired by Norris Bradbury to work in the high explosives division. Reid recalls what it was like growing up as a child at Los Alamos and shares stories about her adventures into the Los Alamos hillside with her younger brother. She also shares memories of attending school in Los Alamos and discusses the diversity of the student body. Reid also recalls some of her encounters with famous scientists working on the atomic, including J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller.
For the interview transcript:
Dorothy McKibbin | Wikipedia audio article
This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
Dorothy McKibbin
Listening is a more natural way of learning, when compared to reading. Written language only began at around 3200 BC, but spoken language has existed long ago.
Learning by listening is a great way to:
- increases imagination and understanding
- improves your listening skills
- improves your own spoken accent
- learn while on the move
- reduce eye strain
Now learn the vast amount of general knowledge available on Wikipedia through audio (audio article). You could even learn subconsciously by playing the audio while you are sleeping! If you are planning to listen a lot, you could try using a bone conduction headphone, or a standard speaker instead of an earphone.
You can find other Wikipedia audio articles too at:
You can upload your own Wikipedia articles through:
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
- Socrates
SUMMARY
=======
Dorothy McKibbin (December 12, 1897 – December 17, 1985) worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. She ran the project's office at 109 East Palace in Santa Fe, through which staff moving to the Los Alamos Laboratory passed. She was known as the first lady of Los Alamos, and was often the first point of contact for new arrivals. She retired when the Santa Fe office closed in 1963.
Project Y | Wikipedia audio article
This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
Project Y
Listening is a more natural way of learning, when compared to reading. Written language only began at around 3200 BC, but spoken language has existed long ago.
Learning by listening is a great way to:
- increases imagination and understanding
- improves your listening skills
- improves your own spoken accent
- learn while on the move
- reduce eye strain
Now learn the vast amount of general knowledge available on Wikipedia through audio (audio article). You could even learn subconsciously by playing the audio while you are sleeping! If you are planning to listen a lot, you could try using a bone conduction headphone, or a standard speaker instead of an earphone.
You can find other Wikipedia audio articles too at:
You can upload your own Wikipedia articles through:
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
- Socrates
SUMMARY
=======
The Los Alamos Laboratory, also known as Project Y, was a secret laboratory established by the Manhattan Project and operated by the University of California during World War II. Its mission was to design and build the first atomic bombs. Robert Oppenheimer was its first director, from 1943 to December 1945, when he was succeeded by Norris Bradbury. For scientists to freely discuss their work while preserving security, the laboratory was located in a remote part of New Mexico. The wartime laboratory occupied buildings that had once been part of the Los Alamos Ranch School.
The development effort initially concentrated on a gun-type fission weapon using plutonium called Thin Man. In April 1944, the Los Alamos Laboratory determined that the rate of spontaneous fission in plutonium bred in a nuclear reactor was too great due to the presence of plutonium-240 and would cause a predetonation, a nuclear chain reaction before the core was fully assembled. Oppenheimer then reorganized the laboratory and orchestrated an all-out and ultimately successful effort on an alternative design proposed by John von Neumann, an implosion-type nuclear weapon, which was called Fat Man. A variant of the gun-type design known as Little Boy was developed using uranium-235.
Chemists at the Los Alamos Laboratory developed methods of purifying uranium and plutonium, the latter a metal that only existed in microscopic quantities when Project Y began. Its metallurgists found that plutonium had unexpected properties, but were nonetheless able to cast it into metal spheres. The laboratory built the Water Boiler, an aqueous homogeneous reactor, the third reactor in the world to become operational. It also researched the Super, a hydrogen bomb that would use a fission bomb to ignite a nuclear fusion reaction in deuterium and tritium.
The Fat Man design was tested in the Trinity nuclear test in July 1945. Project Y personnel formed pit crews and assembly teams for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and participated in the bombing as weaponeers and observers. After the war ended, the laboratory supported the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll. A new Z Division was created to control testing, stockpiling and bomb assembly activities, which were concentrated at Sandia Base. The Los Alamos Laboratory became Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in 1947.