Unique Rental Offers Subterranean Charm

FARMINGTON, N.M. — Available overnight: 1,650-square-foot, one-bedroom cave home, carved from a 60-million-year-old sandstone formation. Warning: Guests must be able to negotiate a 70-foot cliffside staircase.

Otherwise, there’s no roughing it here.

The cave comes complete with plush carpeting, Southwestern furniture and accents, hot and cold running water, well-appointed kitchen, cascading waterfall-style shower and a flagstone hot tub.

And what a view: The entrance is 280 feet above the La Plata River.

Today, the cave home is a cozy underground getaway. But on July 1, owner Bruce Black plans to open it as a bed-and-breakfast.

The cost of an overnight rental is $130 to $150 (two or more), depending on the number of occupants. “I don’t want to gouge anyone,” Black says.

But cliff dwellers only, please.

“I like to think of myself as a cliff dweller, not a caveman,” says Black, a geologist who in 1980 bought the 15-acre parcel that includes the 350-foot cliff he used to carve out the cave home 70 feet from the top.

For inspiration, Black, 60, looked to the Anasazi--ancient Native Americans whose apartment-style adobe ruins are scattered throughout the Four Corners region of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.

Mesa Verde National Park, about 75 miles northwest of here in Colorado, left an imprint on Black. Although the Anasazi at Mesa Verde did not live in caves, he says their cliffside homes struck him.

During the early 1980s, Black paid an excavator $20,000 to blast the cave. “People thought we were crazy,” he says.

Black’s dream lay dormant until a few years ago, when he and his son, Bruce Black Jr. of Las Vegas, returned to the task.

After another $25,000 and countless hours of labor, the once-stark cave had modern amenities: electricity, water heater, refrigerator, microwave oven, washer and dryer.

“My son and I put in everything but the counters in the kitchen and the bathroom,” Black proclaims proudly.

Prospective guests already have called from across the country, and they’re not likely to be disappointed. The cave extends 60 feet into the cliff, affording a calming silence not found in the average hotel.

“Sometimes I just come up and spend some quiet time,” says Black, who usually stays in a conventional house in town.

A visit to the cave begins with a four-mile drive north from Farmington over an unpaved road through a sandy canyon. A parking area atop the cliff is ringed by pinon and juniper trees.

The snowcapped La Plata Mountains, 40 miles distant, shine blue and white. Below the cliff, the muddy river winds past a green wildlife refuge that contrasts the surrounding gray hills.

Although the site is remote, security features include monitors to alert guests of approaching visitors and a mammoth steel door that guards the stairwell.

The twisting descent covers 150 sandstone-carved steps, with a walkway wide enough to comfort the timid. Strategically placed handrails line the route over a small ridge and down to a landing.

The final drop is by handmade ladder to a flagstone-tiled porch and an entryway that features a propane barbecue grill and an 8-by-10-foot sliding glass door.

Inside the cave, the temperature hovers around 62 year-round.

“It’s wonderful in the summer. In the winter, we take the chill off with space heaters,” Black says.

The unimproved sandstone walls are 8 to 9 feet high, with rounded arches connecting each room. Black sprayed the ceiling with clear polyurethane to keep sand from falling.

“There’s no echo. It’s a cozy, warm feeling. I was worried it would be a sterile, bleak hole,” Black says.

An odor, slightly musty but not unpleasant, permeates the cave. Black blames high humidity--40%, compared with 15% to 25% outdoors on a typical New Mexico day.

Next to the kitchen is a functional fireplace that resembles a Pueblo horno, or baking oven. It sits on a replicated kiva--a round tribal meeting room--that serves as storage space.

A shaft drilled from the surface is the chimney. The cave also has a ventilation shaft, and another shaft is linked to a city power-line extension and a cliff-top tank that holds drinking water.

A well for other water was bored 300 feet into the valley floor. An outside pipe runs 250 feet down to a septic tank.

Lighting is provided by several halogen floor lamps. Electrical wires and plumbing are hidden by the raised wooden floor, which has been overlaid with soft carpet.

The bedroom has a sliding glass door and a west-facing patio that offers unobstructed views of sweeping orange sunsets.

“Just like a regular home,” Black says as he settles into a couch, munching on a chocolate-chip cookie.

Black insists he isn’t finished yet. He envisions exterior rooms just outside the cave entrance--three or four cliffside bedrooms to complete the bed and breakfast, again with the ancient Indian theme.

“It was part of the plan from the start,” he says. “I wanted a regular cliff dwelling, just like the Anasazi.”

Bruce Black can be reached at (505) 325-7855.