Cerrillos turquoise

Eleven hundred years of mining history, and five miles of trail running through the middle of it.

Cerrillos Hills State Park lies 16 miles south of Santa Fe, off the Turquoise Trail National Scenic Byway on New Mexico Highway 14 between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. It became New Mexico's 35th and newest state park when the land transferred to state ownership in 2009, having been created in 2003 by Santa Fe County together with the Cerrillos Hills Park Coalition. It is a year-round, day-use park. The visitor centre is in the village of Los Cerrillos, and the hills run from 6,000 to 6,900 feet.

The digging here is much older than the state. Pueblo peoples were taking lead from these hills to use as an ingredient in pottery glazes long before Europeans arrived. The Spanish, who called the range the Sierra de San Mateo, found the lead and silver deposits in 1581. The Cerrillos Mining District proper was created in 1879, after the Americans came, and it was added to the New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties in 1973.

What you actually see on the ground is the late 1800s and early 1900s. Trails including the Cortez Mine and Jane Calvin Sanchez routes run past a great many mines and prospect pits from that period. The historic shafts have been made safe and carry interpretive signs, which is the important part: these are real openings in real ground, and the reason you can walk among them is that somebody secured them.

Treat the park as a place to look rather than a place to collect. It is a state park with protected cultural properties in it, and the mining history is the exhibit.

The views are a genuine reason to come even if the geology leaves you cold. From the trails you can see the Sandia, Ortiz, Jemez and Sangre de Cristo ranges at once, which is a lot of New Mexico in one turn of the head.