Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

If Indian ruins are interesting and exciting to you then plan to visit Chaco Canyon in New Mexico.   During the middle 800s the Chacoan people began building the great ceremonial houses of Chaco Canyon and this lasted for the next 300 years.  These buildings were planned out from the inception, rather than adding on to existing buildings as was the past way of construction.  The buildings were made to be aligned with either the sun or moon and by 1050 Chaco had become the ceremonial center of the San Juan Basin with these buildings housing up to 3000 people in the large ceremonial kivas.

The great buildings of Chaco Canyon included Pueblo Bonito, Una Vida, and Penasco Blanco.  In time Hungo Pavi, Chetro Ketl, Pueblo Alto and other structures were added to the growing number of ceremonial buildings.  The largest, Pueblo Bonito held four story buildings with 700 rooms and was the size of the roman coliseum.  It seems that all of the separate sites were connected by roads to more than 150 other great sites in the surrounding area.  This open path created the roads that the religious migrations took to get the area  As the landscape was between sacred mountain sites and mesas, Chaco Canyon was a place of deep spiritual meaning for the past inhabitants which is still evident today with the remaining ancestors.

Chaco Canyon descendants believe the pueblo was a special ceremonial gathering place for all the local clans people to share cultural traditions and knowledge rather than a farming community which housed people.  Chaco was central to the Navajos who flourished in the complexity of its community and created a ceremonial main hub unlike any other even to this day.

By 1100-1200 construction began to slow at Chaco Canyon.  The region was shifting and Chaco’s influence spread to Mesa Verde, Aztec, and the Chuska Mountains’s centers as the people also migrated away from the great Pueblo.  Eventually the Chacoan Indian ways were incorporated with other cultures.  The descendants of was once the prominent Pueblo in the vicinity merged to become the modern Southwest Indians of today.  Chaco Canyon to them is a sacred and spiritual place to be respected and honored as among one of the most important recorded archaeological sites with nearly 4,000 ruins in the park.

Chaco Canyon is located at an elevation of 6,000 to 6,800 feet in a semi-arid desert in the southeast edge of the Colorado Plateau.  The park gets an average of 9.1 inches of rain a year.  Human occupation in the area spans 7000 years with the Chacoan Indians.  Artifacts found in Chaco are among the largest collections in the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the Smithsonian Institute, and the Chaco Collections at the University of New Mexico.  These collections reveal the average height of the Chocoan man was 5 feet, 5 inches, evidence gained from the smaller doorways.  The small doors also allowed for more stable heating, as a slab over the door works effectively to keep the warmth in.  This was also a great defensive measure.  Research indicates the timbers apparently came from 60-70 miles away to build the great pueblos of Chaco Canyon.

The history, great pueblos, and beautiful landscape all add up to a wonderful adventure awaiting you at Chaco Canyon.

Let’s go!