Here in Los Alamos County, Bandelier is soooo yesterday’s news that we rarely even think about it unless we have out of town friends and family coming for a visit. Our local population was aware of the recent road construction down at the bottom of the truck route and we were vaguely aware that by changing that intersection, it made visitor parking at the Tsankawi archaeological site much more accessible. But not everyone necessarily knows that Tsankawi is part of the Bandelier National Monument. In fact, it’s rather spotty trying to look at a map and figure out where the boundary lines between Bandelier and the Department of Energy land begin and end since there is so much overlap and the public can access plenty of these overlaps through the shiny pedestrian gates located at many trailheads around the region.

So why is there so much overlap between “LANL” and Bandelier? Where did the name come from anyway? It certainly doesn’t sound like a Pueblo or Spanish word. As I was cruising down State Road 4 toward Pajarito Acres the other day, I thought it might be worth a peek!

Turns out, Bandelier is the last name of an unhappy banker from Highland, Illinois. However, Adolph Bandelier wasn’t originally from Illinois. He was born in Bern, Switzerland on August 6, 1840. He came to Illinois with his family in 1848 and was pretty much expected to go into the family business, which he did. Then at 40 yrs old he decided to drop his successful banking career to pursue a longtime interest in archaeology and anthropology. According to the National Parks Service website, Bandelier’s niche interest was focused on tracing “the social organization, customs, and movements of southwestern and Mexican peoples”. I don’t know about you, but that seems an enormous task!

The guy visited 166 sites in New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico in the first 18 months of his career! But one of Bandelier’s most significant career highs was when he asked some of the men of the Cochiti Pueblo to guide him to their ancestral home in Frijoles Canyon on October 23, 1880. This discovery captured Adolph Bandelier’s imagination so strongly that he used the experience to imagine a fictional novel of life in a pueblo settlement in the pre-Spanish era. The book, titled The Delight Makers, was published in 1890 and is still available in print if you look for it used on Ebay or Amazon.

Adolph Bandelier left the US in 1892 to continue his studies in Bolivia and Peru before heading to Seville, Spain where he died on March 18, 1914. He was buried in Seville and Bandelier National Monument was established by President Woodrow Wilson two years later on February 11, 1916. Then in 1977, Adolph Bandelier’s remains were exhumed. His ashes were eventually spread within Bandelier National Monument in 1980.

The dates may seem off, but perhaps the massive amount of paperwork it took to exhume a body in one country, ship it, and then arrange for the spreading of the ashes took a significant amount of time. There is certainly no doubt that Adolph Bandelier considered our local “ruins” to be his life’s most worthwhile endeavor.

We’ve already discussed the general interest in historic, indigenous ruins and how it brought so many different people to the Pajarito Plateau over the years. You can read some more about the early Pajarito Club HERE. The students of the Los Alamos Ranch School were allowed to excavate wherever they found ruins, which is how the ruins currently situated along 19th Street were established as an ancestral site to begin with. But what about folks hanging about in Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project? How did our technical areas get so tangled up with Bandelier when the National Monument status was granted in 1916?

I think we should probably remember that Adolph Bandelier visited 166 sites in Mexico and the American Southwest in 18 months! His guided trip from the Cochiti Pueblo to ancestral lands in Frijoles Canyon didn’t necessarily mean Bandelier excavated everything from Cochiti to the current entrance of the park on State Road 4. Most us of can also recall a time when – whether for better or worse – access and freedom to crawl all over rock formations and ancient ruins was much less restricted.

This relaxed attitude toward excavation, exploration, and general access to the ruins which a modern mind considers “Bandelier” was one of the favorite pastimes of the Los Alamos staff during the Manhattan Project. According to Jon Michnovicz’s book Los Alamos 1944-1947, Stanislaw Ulam and Enrico Fermi in particular had many important and lively discussions while traipsing around the ruins of “Tyuonyi”.

Also, while the National Monument was established in 1916, it was originally under the US Forest Service. Bandelier was not transferred to the National Park Service until 1932. Edgar Hewett, who excavated Tyuonyi, originally proposed that the whole area be set aside as the Pajarito National Park. This concept gained no support thanks to local ranchers, famers, homesteaders, and lumber companies. Then comes the very secretive Manhattan Project, which carved out sections of ancient indigenous lands for what had originally been a short term project.

If you consider the very slow shift of open territory to public and private and eventually returning in part to native owned lands, the current checkerboard quality of Bandelier and the incredible open space around Los Alamos begins to make a bit more sense. There has also been a great amount of effort geared toward preservation and respect of these cultural sites. Here in our region, we’ve seen many places which were historically considered “trailheads” or places to hike become officially mapped and some of them – like Tsankawi – are now part of Bandelier and require a park pass or an entrance fee which helps provide for preservation as well as necessary amenities like restrooms and visitor centers or information booths.

As we leave the school year for the summer and we think about things to do over the summer, it might be time to revisit the Bandelier National Park website HERE. You can plan a hike or take in a native cultural demonstration at the main park. Or, you could plan a hike to the Falls or to the Caldera and enjoy a peek at scenery which has fascinated visitors to Los Alamos ever since AJ Connell’s Summer Camps at the Los Alamos Ranch School!

And when you’re ready to join our community here in Los Alamos, give me a call! We have some amazing homes here in the Secret City and I’d love to help you discover your perfect home in Los Alamos. I’m a hometown girl and I love to chat real estate in Los Alamos!