El Malpais National Monument

South of Grants the black edge of a lava field runs for miles beside the highways: El Malpais, the badlands, as Spanish travelers called country that no wagon could cross. Five main flows poured from vents in the Zuni-Bandera volcanic field over the last sixty thousand years. The youngest came out of McCartys Crater about 3,900 years ago and is the youngest lava in New Mexico. Many of its forms carry Hawaiian names, pahoehoe for the smooth ropy kind and aa for the broken clinker.

Two roads frame it. NM-53, on the west, leads to the Big Tubes area, where the Bandera flow of about 10,900 years ago left a lava tube and trench system at least seventeen miles long. A few caves are open to anyone carrying a free permit, a helmet and three lights, and some hold fragile ice. NM-117, on the east, runs between the McCartys flow and pale sandstone bluffs to La Ventana, one of the largest natural arches in New Mexico, on the Bureau of Land Management's conservation area next door.

The Zuni-Acoma Trail, an ancient trade route between the two pueblos, crosses four of the flows on cairn-marked rock and makes plain how hard this ground was to travel. These lands have mattered to Acoma, Laguna, Zuni and the Ramah Navajo for thousands of years. The national monument and the conservation area were both created at the end of 1987.