Anniversary Trail and Meditation Point

Above the Main Hill Road (NM502) there is a .4 mile trail which ends at Meditation Point with a bench overlooking the road and the canyon below.

At the top of the main hill on the south side of the road there is a dirt turnout where you can park.

Be careful entering and exiting this turnout. It’s a busy area. (If you are interested in a longer hike there are two other entrances to the trail further west. One is by the water tower, and the other is across from the Main Gate building.)

This trail follows the old Otowi Hill Road.

There is a sign at Meditation Point, which is difficult to read. It is a quote by Ruth Marshak:

“

The most direct road to…(Los Alamos)…was a treacherous washboard running though the Indian pueblo of San Ildefonso, over the muddy Rio Grande, and then up a series of narrow switchbacks. As we neared the top of the mesa, the view was breathtaking. Behind us lay the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, at sunset bathed in changing waves of color—scarlets and lavenders. Below was the desert with its flatness broken by majestic palisades that seemed like the ruined cathedrals and palaces of some old, great, vanished race. Ahead was Los Alamos, and beyond the flat plateau on which it sat was its backdrop, the Jemez Mountain Range. Whenever things went wrong at Los Alamos, and there was never a day when they didn’t, we had this one consolation—we had a view.”