The Turquoise Trail is a back road connecting Albuquerque and Santa Fe New Mexico. As you travel along this scenic byway you will find a landscape of mountains, canyons, forest, and rock formations. One of the interesting rock formations is the Garden of the Gods, a variegated landscape, which extends for about three miles on both sides of the road just north of Cerrillos New Mexico. Over 70 million years ago streams deposited horizontal beds of colorful sandstone and mudstone. The earth’s movement gradually pushed these beds into the vertical positions that you see today.
The San Marcos Pueblo was about a mile from the Garden of the Gods, and each spring the pueblo people would plant their crops in the valley between the rock formations. Because this area was sacred ground to the Indians they carved reglious petroglyphs, and erected stone shrines to honor the kachina spirits that brought rain and protected their crops. In the 1880’s, the Indians reverence of the land, led the government surveyors to name this area Garden of the Gods. |
