Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument

The monument this panel describes is ringed by a larger first. On June 3, 1924, the Forest Service set aside about 755,000 acres of the Gila National Forest as the Gila Wilderness, the first designated wilderness in the world, on a plan drawn up by Aldo Leopold, a Forest Service officer in New Mexico. The tract was cut and divided over the decades; today the Gila Wilderness covers 559,688 acres and the Aldo Leopold Wilderness, restored in 1980, another 202,016. This panel hangs at the Lordsburg visitor center, far from the caves it names.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument was established in 1907 by Theodore Roosevelt to protect the prehistoric material culture of the Mogollon people and others who inhabited this area. The first scientific description of a pueblo ruin on the upper Gila River was written in 1874 by Henry Wetherbee Henshaw of the Wheeler Geographical Surveys of the Territories of the United States West of the 100th Meridian.

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• Lordsburg — steps away
• Shakespeare — steps away
• The Women of Shakespeare — steps away
• Lordsburg — 0.6 mi