Chaco Culture National Historic Park

Sat Apr 16
We hope you don't get bored with another lengthy post. We got an early start to the Chaco Culture National Historic Park in Chaco Canyon

Visitor Center

this morning with an anticipated three-hour trip each way. We returned about dusk and had a most fulfilling day in spite of some difficult travel. The southern approach we took from Gallup was 98 miles each way, the last twenty miles of which was unimproved road that was a challenge for Little Blue. A high-clearance vehicle would have been better suited. There were ruts all along the way, stretches of serious washboard and frequent rocky sections that we had to crawl and pick our way over to avoid undercarriage damage but we made it both ways without incident. It was amazing that after all this the roads within the park were paved! From articles we read there is great resistance by environmentalists to paving that section of access road to discourage high volume visitation. But for those that brave it you cannot imagine what an incredible experience it is to visit the home of these amazing peoples from the distant past who left so few clues regarding their culture. But what we do know makes one wonder how they gained their apparent knowledge, as with other ancient cultures down through Central America, of the times and seasons of the sun and moon. It is known that the Chacoan people traded with peoples as much as two-thousand miles to the South. The ruins we visited were built over a period of three centuries beginning around 800 AD. The largest ruin and where we spent most of our time was in the D-shaped Pueblo Bonito.

The straight outside wall is precisely aligned to the sun's movement North and South (no shadow at noon day).

Ranger-guided tours were available but booklets at trail heads with maps and interesting, detailed descriptions corresponding to numbered markers along the route made self-guided tours possible. It was also easier on self-guided tours to get pictures with fewer people in them.

As Pueblo Bonito evolved it eventually towered four to five stories high and contained over six hundred rooms and forty kivas. The ancient architects designed high multi-story walls with massive bases that tapered toward the top.

These larger complexes are referred to as "great houses." Ceremonial round kivas that supported two to three hundred people are likewise referred to as "great kivas."

Eras of construction can be identified by the patterns of rock and mortar in the walls as shown in order from the earliest to the latest top to bottom.

Additions can be identified by walls that butt up against

rather than being integrated into the wall they meet.

While these people were not cliff dwellers they did build structures that were tied into cliffs. Rows of holes in some places show where supporting roof beams were embedded in the cliff walls.

A trail between the great house Chetro Ketl and Pueblo Bonito displayed several examples of petroglyphs in the cliff walls.

The climax to our visit was a two-mile round trip hike that climbed the two hundred plus foot high canyon wall through a steep, rocky, very narrow pass to the canyon rim

where we first had a look down on the Kin Kletso ruin

and then continued to the  Pueblo Bonito overlook.

This provided an "aerial" view of this ruin and it was awesome!