🌿 RelaxedDay trip · from Albuquerque, NM
The Turquoise Trail — Cerrillos Ghost Village, the Mining Hills & the Golden Back Roads
The Turquoise Trail climbs out of the Rio Grande valley into the high piñon-and-juniper country between the Sandia and Ortiz mountains, a national scenic byway that follows the old mining road toward Santa Fe. This unhurried day settles on its quietest reach: Los Cerrillos, a near-frozen 1880s mining village of dirt streets and adobe storefronts where turquoise and lead were once dug from the surrounding hills, and where the pace has barely quickened in a century. It walks the piñon-dotted trails of Cerrillos Hills State Park among the old mine shafts, then wanders the empty back roads through Golden — a true ghost town of tumbled adobe and a lovingly kept little church — before dropping back to the city. It is a day of dust, silence, big skies, and the ghosts of the mining West.
Los Cerrillos ghost-mining village & Cerrillos Hills State ParkThe Golden & Sandia Park back roads of the Turquoise Trail
Day 1 — Los Cerrillos & the Turquoise Trail, NM
Day 1 — Los Cerrillos & the Turquoise Trail, NM
🚗 1 hr 25 min driving📍 5 stops
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Morning
🚗
Drive
Albuquerque, NM → Los Cerrillos, NM
45 min8:00 AM → 8:45 AM
Los Cerrillos Village
Los Cerrillos is one of the most atmospheric near-ghost towns in New Mexico, a dirt-street mining village that boomed in the 1880s when the surrounding hills gave up turquoise, lead, silver, and gold, then quietly emptied and never modernized. Adobe and false-front storefronts line the unpaved lanes, and the town has stood in for the Old West in more than one film — its unhurried, half-abandoned feel is the whole draw. Wander the few short blocks on foot, look in on the small Casa Grande Trading Post and turquoise museum, and let the silence and the mountain light do their work. There is no rush here and very little traffic; that is exactly the point.
8:45 AM📍 See location
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Lunch
Cerrillos Hills State Park
★ 4.5Just north of the village, Cerrillos Hills State Park protects a low range of piñon-and-juniper hills honeycombed with some of the oldest mine workings in North America — turquoise was dug here by ancestral Puebloan and later Spanish miners long before the 1880s rush. Gentle, well-graded trails climb among the old shafts and prospect pits to ridgeline viewpoints that take in the Sandias, the Ortiz Mountains, and the Sangre de Cristos on a clear day. Interpretive signs explain the geology and the long human history of mining these hills. It's an easy, unhurried walk of an hour or two; carry water, as there is little shade and the high-desert sun is strong.
9:45 AM📍 See location
🍽️ Lunch10:45 AM
San Marcos Cafe & Feed Store
A beloved rural institution just off the Turquoise Trail near Cerrillos, the San Marcos Cafe shares its adobe building with a working feed store, and peacocks, turkeys, and chickens wander the yard outside. Inside it serves generous New Mexican breakfasts and lunches — huevos rancheros, cinnamon rolls, green-chile everything — in a warm, ramshackle, thoroughly local room. It is exactly the kind of unhurried country spot this drive is built around. Hours can be limited midweek, so check before you set out.
2 options · tap to switch
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Afternoon
Golden Ghost Town & San Francisco de Asís Church
★ 4.6South down the Turquoise Trail toward the Sandias lies Golden, site of the first documented gold rush west of the Mississippi in 1825 and now a genuine ghost town of scattered, melting adobe ruins strung along the highway. Its centerpiece is the little San Francisco de Asís church, a restored 1830s adobe chapel on a rise above the road, photogenic against the empty hills and often the only sign of life for miles. A general store and a few rock-and-mineral stops occasionally open along the way. Pull over, walk the roadside ruins, and soak in the emptiness — this is the quietest, most haunting stretch of the drive.
12:00 PM📍 See location
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Evening
Sandia Park & the Turquoise Trail Overlooks
★ 4.6As the trail curves back toward Albuquerque it climbs through Sandia Park, the pine-scented back-country community where the desert gives way to ponderosa and cooler air along the byway. Pullouts open to long views east across the Estancia Basin and back over the mining hills, and the late-afternoon light on the piñon country is at its best here. A slow drive with a stop or two at the Turquoise Trail overlooks, perhaps a last browse at the roadside Tinkertown Museum, is a fine, unhurried finish before the descent home.
5:00 PM📍 See location
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Drive
Sandia Park, NM → Albuquerque, NM
40 min6:00 PM → 6:40 PM
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