Frijoles Canyon at Bandelier National Monument. Tyuonyi pubelo ruins are barely visible in the center of the photo (visible at Original size). Arpil 9, 2005

Tyuonyi Pueblo. First settled about 1100 AD. It is estimated 400-500 persons lived in this pueblo and the cliff dwellings above it for 400-500 years.

Cave rooms in the cliffs above the puebelo dug out of the walls. Walls were plastered with clay. Rooms were seldom used alone but as back rooms for houses built in front of cliffs.

A portal on the sky from a deep crevice at the cliff base.

Interesting patterns created by erosion are evident in this cliff face.

Example of a shear cliff face. Note the rows of horizontal holes in the face of the cliff. These were used to support lodge poles that extended over the roof of the houses built in front of the cliffs. Rooms were dug into the cliffs for storage.

Bat Cave. The vertical opening in the cliff in the left ceter of the picture is the home to 10,000 bats in the summer. The opening is the lower part of a large vertical cave buried high in the cliff carved from thousands of years of erosion by water entering at the top.