Sandia Cave

Restoration Project

Home Page for the Sandia Cave Restoration Project

Located high on the east side of Las Huertas Canyon in the northern Sandia Mountains, the cave is a favorite destination for visitors. The cave was visited during the 1930s when an archaeology project based at the University of New Mexico began excavations in the dry, dusty cave. Today, 80 years later, the easy walk up a 0.4 mile trail from a parking lot leads the visitor to the spiral steel staircase that leads up to the ledge where the cave was first entered. The photo on the left is near the first view from the trail to the staircase.

The Sandia Grotto of the National Speleological Society has acted as the caretaker of the cave for several decades. We began work on the restoration project for the cave in 2014, and during 2015 we were able to remove most of the graffiti in the first two chambers of the small cave. Since that time weekly visits have insured that the graffiti artists will find a better location for their artwork than this National Historic Landmark.

Check out some of the history and the geology of this site and look below for other links to pages that go into more detail on the actual cleanup project.

For those interested in a quick overview of the cleanup project, there is a You Tube video from our local KRQE News station, filmed during the 2015 Project.