El Morro National Monument
High Traffic Alert
This park experiences heavy crowds, especially on weekends.
Check out the similar parks below for a better experience
Popular destination, arrive early for parking
Best: Weekdays before 10am
Imagine the refreshment of finding water after days of dusty travel. A reliable waterhole hidden at the base of a sandstone bluff made El Morro (the headland) a popular campsite for hundreds of years. Here, ancestral Puebloans, Spanish, and American travelers carved over 2,000 signatures, dates, messages, and petroglyphs. Make El Morro National Monument a stopping point on your travels.
Try These Instead
These parks offer similar experiences with fewer crowds
Valles Caldera National Preserve
About 1.2 million years ago, a spectacular volcanic eruption created a 14-mile-wide circular depression in the earth now known as Valles Caldera.
Why go: Similar hiking, wildlife viewing, stargazing experience
Around 119 miles away
