Gila Hot Springs Campground is a private business. It offers camping and natural hot spring pools beside the Gila River. There is a fee for camping.

The geology in and around Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument is a result of volcanic events ranging from approximately 50 million to 25 million years ago. It started with two eruptions from a super-volcano which formed the Bursum and Cliff Dweller calderas. This activity created several layers of rock from the igneous rhyolitic layer to the petrified ash piles of the Bloodgood Tuff. Somewhere in the middle is the Gila conglomerate, a cocktail of many different kinds of rock held together by a natural sandstone mortar. Earth was making masonry here long before the Mogollon!

Wind, water, and fluctuating temperatures have been acting on the Gila conglomerate over the course of millions of years and have instigated a process called exfoliation, whereby pieces of rock of varying sizes flake off and fall to the ground. This is the process that created the alcoves where the cliff dwellings were built. The flakes were later found by the Mogollon people who broke some of them down even more and used them to build their walls. Exfoliation is an ongoing process that never stops until the mountain is eventually (probably in hundreds of millions of years or so) reduced to a flat surface.

There is no entrance fee at the National Monument.