New Mexico Office of the State Historian : Cañon de Los Frijoles

Cañon de Los Frijoles

“Through the vale itself rustles the clear and cool brook to which the name of the Rito de los Fritos is applied. It meanders on, hugging the southern slope, partly through open spaces, partly through groves of timber, and again past tall stately pine trees standing isolated in the valley. Willows, cherry trees, cottonwoods and elders form small thickets along its banks.”

"Still the Rito must have appeared then much as it appears now, ---a quiet lovely picturesque retreat, peaceful when basking in the sunlight, wonderfully quiet when the stars sparkled over it, or the moon shed its flood of silver on the cliffs and on the murmuring brook below.”

"For a number of hours we have to follow the base of the huge potreros, crossing narrow ravines, ascending steep but not long slopes, until about noon we stand on the brink of a gorge so deep it might be called a chasm. We look down to a narrow bottom and groves of cottonwood trees. To the north, the chasm is walled in by towering rocks; the Rio Grande flows through one corner; and on its opposite bank arise cliffs of trap lava and basalt, black and threatening, while the rocks on the west side are bright red, yellow and white. The trail to the Rito goes down into this abyss and climbs up on the other side through clefts and along steep slopes. But we are not going to follow this trail."

Adolf F. Bandelier
The Delight Makers
Dodd Mead and Company, 1960 (original 1890)