Chaco Culture National Historical Park in northwestern New Mexico is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. First designated as Chaco Canyon National Monument in 1907, it became a National Park in 1980 and a World Heritage Site in 1987. In 2013, the International Dark-Sky Association certified the park as an International Dark Sky Park.
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| Entrance to Chaco Culture National Historical Park |
Chaco Canyon is remote and not easily accessible if you don’t have a four-wheel drive vehicle with high clearance. That’s because one section of the road leading into the park is unpaved, with long stretches of gravelly washboard. Rather than risking an accident with my compact car, my traveling companions and I arranged to visit with a guide, Tori Myers of Salmon Ruins, who is a professional archaeologist and who drove us there in an SUV. (Salmon Ruins will be the topic of my next blog post.)
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| Our tour guide's SUV was the perfect vehicle for visiting the park |
Paleontological evidence reveals fossils from the Late Cretaceous period of around 80 – 75 million years ago. The heyday of human habitation in Chaco Canyon was between 850 – 1150 A.D. but archaeological evidence has revealed that people were living in the region at least a thousand years earlier. A river ran through the canyon and the climate was more humid; today, it’s arid and the river has dried up.
Chaco Culture National Historical Park was the center of a civilization in what’s now New Mexico that included many smaller outposts as far south as the area near current-day Grants, N.M. to as far north as current-day Cortez, Colorado, and into eastern Arizona. Evidence of trade with Mesoamerica reveals the range of Chaco Culture. The park is known for its architecture, petroglyphs, and its astronomy programs.
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| View of Pueblo Bonito, one of the sites at Chaco Canyon |
Our first stop after checking out the Visitor Center was Una Vida. A short walk from the parking lot, this mostly unexcavated “Great House” shows the skill of the masons who constructed these buildings. A “great house” isn’t actually one large building; rather, it’s a group of buildings containing many rooms, plus kivas of various sizes, surrounding a plaza. (A kiva is a round space encircled by a stone wall that is built partly or completely below ground and used for ceremonial activities.) Una Vida is one of the older sites at Chaco. It was constructed between 850 – 1250 A.D.
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| Part of Una Vida, easily accessible from the Visitor Center parking lot |
Driving by Hungo Pavi, our next stop was Chetro Ketil. This Great House was larger than Una Vida and Tori pointed out many architectural features we wouldn’t have known about had we not been with her. She explained how the masonry of the buildings at Chaco changed over the centuries and told us that the wooden beams we saw in the buildings were the original logs.
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| View approaching Chetro Ketil |
Chetro Ketil was constructed up against a cliff wall, as were many of the other Chaco sites. Tori told us that along the cliff, petroglyphs were visible so I walked along a trail to see them. Helpfully, markers on the trail pointed straight to each collection of petroglyphs and looking through my camera’s zoom lens easily revealed them.
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| Petroglyphs on trail; note the spiral and humanoid images |
A brochure from the Visitor Center explains how the petroglyphs were made and offers theories about what they might mean. However, accurately determining the ages of the images is difficult. Some of the images seem to represent people and animals while others are apparently more symbolic.
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More petroglyphs; note the geometric forms and what may be a caterpillar or cacao plant |
After eating a boxed lunch, we explored Pueblo Bonito, the largest and most famous site in Chaco Culture National Historical Park. Constructed between approximately 850 – 1150 A.D., with buildings that were 4 stories high and spread over 3 acres, the complex was semi-circular in shape and situated next to a cliff wall. In fact, the trail from Chetro Ketil with petroglyphs ends behind Pueblo Bonito.
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| View of Pueblo Bonito, from the front of the site |
Due to its location in a canyon, Chaco is very windy. My traveling companions needed the walking sticks they’d brought with them to help when going up and down some rocky paths and to maintain their balance when the winds gusted. And, due to the wind, dust often swirled around us and I had to be careful to protect my camera lenses.
My fellow travelers were glad to take advantage of a strategically-placed bench that lets you rest and contemplate what the scene may have looked like 900 years ago when Pueblo Bonito flourished. Many archaeologists now think that instead of being homes for a huge number of people, the buildings in Chaco Canyon primarily served ceremonial and trading purposes. Looking at the large kiva in front of us, it was not hard to believe that.
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| Large kiva at Pueblo Bonito |
A trail leads you through some of the rooms inside Pueblo Bonito. I saw the exquisite masonry up close and it was amazing how well the stones fit together and how smooth the walls were. But what really struck me were the logs. Tori, our guide, explained how the beams were used to support the additional floors/ceilings of the buildings. Looking at wood around 1,000 years old -- the same wood the builders of Pueblo Bonito touched -- it was humbling to ponder the longevity of Chaco and realize how much older it is than the present-day United States.
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| Log beams and wood lintel above upper window at Pueblo Bonito |
It was now almost mid-afternoon and from Pueblo Bonito, we drove on the paved road back to the Visitor Center. We passed the Wetherill Cemetery where Richard Wetherill, an archaeologist at the turn of the 20th century with a mixed reputation, was buried. Further along, Tori pointed out what she called “small sites” on our right; they were small, individual structures whose purpose is unknown.
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| Info plaque and trail to Wetherill Cemetery |
The next place we stopped to look at is called “the Staircase.” You can clearly see steps carved on the right of the cliff. Tori told us they lead up to a Chaco road. The Chaco Culture built hundreds of miles of roads connecting outlying sites to the buildings in Chaco Canyon.
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| "The Staircase" -- the steps are visible at the top center of the cliff |
The last place of interest was Fajada Butte. Actually, that was the first noticeable point of interest we saw as we approached Chaco Canyon in the morning and Tori explained that during the summer and winter solstices, a beam of sunlight shined across a spiral petroglyph at the top of the mountain. It was clearly and intentionally designed as some sort of astronomical marker by the Chaco people.
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| Fajada Butte |
After around 1250 A.D., new buildings were no longer being constructed. Over time, the people using Chaco Canyon left the area, perhaps as a result of changing climate conditions. Their descendants, the Hopi, Pueblo, and Navajo (Dine) people all have ancestral connections to Chaco.
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| Looking down at Pueblo Bonito from a vantage point high above, with a view of the canyon in the distance |
Tori revealed the history of Chaco Canyon to us during an informative and very enjoyable day. Chaco Culture National Historical Park is not an easy place to get to but it’s well worth the effort and going with a guide makes it even more pleasurable and rewarding.
(For information about taking a tour of Chaco Canyon, please click HERE.)
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