Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, forty-seven miles north of Silver City and at the edge of the Gila Wilderness Area, contains a series of ruins that portray the development of the agricultural Indians who lived south of the Mogollon Mountains. Specifically, the ruins represent a branch of the generalized culture known as Mogollon. Although part of the road to the Monument was paved in 1963, the last four-mile stretch is still primitive and should not be attempted in an ordinary passenger car except during the summer and in dry weather. In spite of the difficult road, more than 23,000 people visited the Monument during 1965. The last four miles of the road have been recently paved. The earliest ruin yet found within the Monument is a Mogollon pit house of a type that was made about 500 A.D. It is roundish and, on the east side, has a narrow ramplike entrance some two feet wide and ten feet long. The people of this period did only a little farming (corn and beans), a little hunting, and gathered much uncultivated plant food. They made a fairly good plain-brown pottery and undoubtedly were skilled in a number of crafts whose products have since disappeared. Such things as nets and snares, baskets, and wooden tools last but a short time in open sites. Other, later, pit house types may be seen in the Monument. Pit houses were prevalent in the area until about 1000 A.D., when influences from the Anasazi (Pueblo) Indians of the northern part of the Southwest began to affect the Mogollon people. Square houses, built above the ground, became the style; some were of masonry, some of adobe construction, and some were built of wattle (wooden rods and twigs). A new type of pottery was also introduced at about the same time: white with black designs. The principal ruins in the Monument are the cliff dwellings, which were built during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They, too, reflect the northern pueblo influence. About forty rooms, remarkably well preserved, are fitted into a series of chambers, or caves, in a low cliff of Gila Conglomerate. By about the beginning of the fifteenth century, the area was abandoned by the farming Indians. Gran Quivira National Monument Significant chapters in the absorbing history of New Mexico were written at three sites that have been made units of the National Park System. Gran Quivira National Monument, near the center of the state southeast of Mountainair, preserves the ruins of a frontier Spanish mission that had been built, used, and abandoned by 1675. The Monument contains twenty-one ruined house mounds of Indian pueblos and ruins of two mission churches. It was the presence of the Indians at this location, of course, that attracted the Franciscan missionaries. [Illustration: A look at ruins of Gran Quivira]