[3][4] Once, thriving Native American trade communities of Tiwa and Tompiro language-speaking Pueblo people inhabited this remote frontier area of central New Mexico.

In a forest, an interpretive sign reads that when Francis Gardes traveled through the area, he heard birds sing a song called "When Explorers Came".

The Gran Quivira Ruins are located about 25 miles south of Mountainair, at about 6500 feet (1981 m) above sea level.

The Gran Quivira, as it has been called for over a hundred years, is by far the best known of the Salinas pueblos, and in fact is one of the most celebrated ruins in all of the Southwest.

From the days of Coronado the name of "Quivira" had been associated with the idea of a great unknown city, of wealth and splendor, situated somewhere on the Eastern Plains; and it is not at all unlikely that when some party from the Rio Grande Valley, in search of game or gold, crossed the mountains and the wilderness lying to the east, and was suddenly amazed by the apparition of a dead city, silent and tenantless, but bearing the evidences of large population, of vast resources, of architectural knowledge, mechanical skill, and wonderful energy, they should have associated with it the stories heard from childhood of the mythical center of riches and power, and called the new-found wonder the Gran Quivira.