El Morro is located southeast of Gallup, New Mexico along NM route 53.

El Morro (the Headlands)NM is situated on an ancient east-west trade trail. It has pool of water at the base of a great cliff where early travelers could camp at the shaded oasis beneath the cliffs.

The place is known as "the place of writings on the rocks".

The first people to utilize the area were ancestoral traders of the Zuni Nation. The next were Spanish Conquistores and settlers. The most famous person to stop and "sign the cliffs" was Don Juan de Oņate, governor and captain general of the Spanish Kingdom of New Mexico, who inscribed his name on April 16, 1605. Next to visit the area, after the end of the Mexican War, was the US Army soldiers and emigrants going to California. Another person won incribed his name on the cliffs, from P. Gilmer Breckinridge, who was leading a expedition west using 25 camels.