Just over a million years ago, a volcano in the Jemez Mountain range near Los Alamos, New Mexico exploded with a force 600 times that of Mount St. Helens. The falling ash from the explosion formed a type of soft rock with yellow, white and reddish hues known as tufa. Over the centuries, weather and erosion revealed large holes in the tufa along the canyon walls.

10,000 years ago, the first nomadic humans discovered these natural shelters and settled in the area. In the mid 16th Century, the early ancestors of today's Pueblo peoples, made their homes within the hollowed-out regions of the Frijoles canyon known as cavates.

In the 1880s, Swiss archaeologist and accomplished linguist Adolph F. Bandelier conducted research on the area's early native residents. In 1916, his findings led President Woodrow Wilson to declare the site a national treasure and named it in honor of the researcher.

During the Great Depression the New Deal's Civilian Conservation Corps brought a new labor force to enhance and protect the site. The CCC constructed roads, trails, and supplemental buildings for the new park.

During the intense days of the Second World War, the federal government restricted access to the monument, further concealing the top-secret atomic research being conducted in nearby Los Alamos.

Today, nature threatens this archaeological treasure through the growth of juniper trees in the lower elevations and conifers in the upper elevations, which check the growth of soil-anchoring grass as wind and water erode away soil and artifacts.

Bandelier National Monument stands as a physical reminder of both the natural landscape and the complex and unique cultures that existed in America well before the birth of the United States.

Podcast Written and Narrated by Ryan Broome, Public History Student at the University of West Florida.