Puye Cliff Dwellings

On Santa Clara Pueblo land in the cliffs of the Pajarito Plateau, the Pueblo's ancestors carved homes, storage rooms and hand-hold trails into the soft volcanic tuff, living in the cliff houses and on the mesa top below the Cerro del Yuto. The tribe's own enterprise describes ancestors living at Puye two thousand years back; the archaeological record dates the cliff occupation mainly to the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries, and this entry gives both statements their places. Kivas on the mesa top remain ceremonial.

The site's modern history ran through the Fred Harvey Company's early tourist lodge, through years of full closure by the Pueblo, and back to the present arrangement: the descendant community owns, operates and narrates the site, on guided tours with its own rules, which include no video or audio recording, no photographs inside the kiva, and no drones.

Visiting

Puye Cliff Dwellings is open year round, 8am to 4pm, closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays, tours starting 8:30am with the last at 2:30pm; all guests check in at the gift shop and tours are the only access. Still photography only, and never inside the kiva.

Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Puye_Cliff_Dwellings,_New_Mexico.jpg), CC BY 2.0, Sheila Sund.