By state
National parks in New Mexico
Every National Park Service unit in New Mexico, scored and ranked by our Experience Score.
100ESSENTIAL
NPS/Janice Wei
National Monument · NM
Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument
Gila Cliff Dwellings punches well above its monument status.
98ESSENTIAL
NPS Photo
National Monument · NM
El Morro National Monument
El Morro is a legitimately rare thing: a free national monument where the main attraction is a 200-foot sandstone bluff covered in over 2,000 real human inscriptions spanning centuries, from ancestral Puebloan petroglyphs to Spanish conquistador signatures to 19th-century American emigrants.
90ESSENTIAL
NPS Photo/Sally King
National Monument · NM
Bandelier National Monument
Bandelier punches well above its $15 entry fee.
85ESSENTIAL
NPS Kristi Rugg
National Monument · NM
El Malpais National Monument
El Malpais is one of New Mexico's most underrated free lands, a volcanic badlands of hardened lava flows, cinder cones, and lava tubes that rewards curious visitors willing to get off the pavement.
83EXCELLENT
NPS / Michael Larson
National Park · NM
Carlsbad Caverns National Park
At one dollar entry, Carlsbad Caverns is arguably the best value in the entire national park system.
78EXCELLENT
NPS Photo
National Preserve · NM
Valles Caldera National Preserve
Valles Caldera is one of the most underrated landscapes in the American Southwest: a vast, bowl-shaped volcanic meadow 14 miles across, ringed by forested ridges and threaded with trout streams.
76EXCELLENT
NPS Photo
National Monument · NM
Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument
Salinas Pueblo Missions is three separate sites in one free monument, each preserving massive Spanish colonial church ruins alongside ancestral Pueblo structures in the high New Mexico desert.
74EXCELLENT
NPS Photo
National Historical Park · NM
Pecos National Historical Park
Pecos punches well above its size for a free park.
66WORTH IT
NPS Photo
National Monument · NM
Aztec Ruins National Monument
Aztec Ruins delivers something rare: a genuinely well-preserved ancestral Pueblo great house you can walk through at close range, including a reconstructed Great Kiva that is one of the most immersive pre-Columbian spaces in the Southwest.
63WORTH IT
NPS photo/ R. Richman
National Monument · NM
Capulin Volcano National Monument
Capulin is a genuinely rare thing: a cinder cone volcano you can walk around the rim of and peer down into, free of charge, in the high plains of northeastern New Mexico.
63WORTH IT
NPS Photo
National Park · NM
White Sands National Park
White Sands is one of the most visually singular places in the American park system, full stop.
62WORTH IT
NPS Photo
National Historic Trail · CO
Santa Fe National Historic Trail
The Santa Fe National Historic Trail is less a single destination than a 900-mile argument for slowing down across five states.
57WORTH IT
NPS
National Historic Trail · NM
El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail
This is not a park you visit so much as a route you research and then piece together yourself.
57WORTH IT
Ron Harvey - Fort Union National Monument
National Monument · NM
Fort Union National Monument
Fort Union is a free, unhurried stop for anyone driving northern New Mexico with a genuine curiosity about the Santa Fe Trail and frontier military life.
52NICHE
B Davis
National Historical Park · NM
Chaco Culture National Historical Park
Chaco is one of the most intellectually serious places in the US park system.
52NICHE
NPS
National Historic Trail · AZ
Old Spanish National Historic Trail
The Old Spanish National Historic Trail is less a destination than a framework, a 2,700-mile spine connecting museums, scenic roads, and trailheads across six states that trace the old mule-pack trading routes between Santa Fe and Los Angeles.
47NICHE
NPS Photo / Daniel Leifheit
National Monument · NM
Petroglyph National Monument
Petroglyph National Monument is a genuinely singular cultural site sitting right on the edge of Albuquerque, protecting thousands of images carved into volcanic rock by Native peoples and Spanish settlers centuries ago.
43NICHE
Los Alamos National Laboratory
National Historical Park · NM
Manhattan Project National Historical Park
This is not a park you visit for scenery.
24NICHE
NPS Photo
National Historic Trail · MO
Butterfield Overland National Historic Trail
This is not a park you visit so much as a history you trace.