On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
If not for the first photo, I might call this a study in blue from Albatrossity. I think my favorite is the snowmelt pools reflecting the turquoise sky. Probably not a surprise coming from someone who calls herself WaterGirl!
This is a two-part story about other ancient Puebloan sites that you might want to visit. The first is a place called Hovenweep; the second is a so-called Chacoan outlier site in southwestern Colorado.
The Ancestral Puebloan culture center in Chaco Canyon was not the only center of civilization in the southwestern US a millennia ago. There were others, including the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde (which most folks have heard about and even visited) as well as some which are less well known. Hovenweep, which lies on the border between southwestern Colorado and Southeastern Utah, is one of those.
The canyonlands at Hovenweep were peopled by hunters and farmers for millennia, but in mid 9th century AD these people started construction of larger permanent structures. Sometime between AD 1200 and 1300, they built some of the most amazing buildings of the time, multi-story towers of stone. Some are round, some are square, and all are built in sandstone canyons on very irregular sites. Some are right on the canyon edge.
The function(s) of these structures are a mystery; speculation has centered on defense, storage, celestial observation, ceremony, or perhaps all of the above. We might never know, since, like the Chacoans, the people who built these edifices fled to the current Pueblos of the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico and the Colorado River basin in Arizona, after a series of devastating droughts at the end of the 13th Century. The Hopi and Zuni People, as well as all the Pueblo people of the Rio Grande Valley, are thought to be the descendants of the ancient architects of Hovenweep, Mesa Verde, and Chaco.
This is a square tower at Hovenweep, still standing after centuries of wear and tear in this hostile climate, perched directly on an irregular outcrop at the canyon edge.
Snowmelt pools reflecting the turquoise sky at Hovenweep.
Hoarfrost on a plant that the Ancestral Puebloans never saw, the invasive tamerisk (aka tamarix, aka saltcedar). This plant was introduced for erosion control in the US in the 19th century, and has become a major problem sucking up the water and inhibiting the growth of native species. But on a winter morning it can be beautiful.
Woodhouse’s Scrub-jay is a common denizen of this high plateau, and a charming beggar.
The next four images are from a Chacoan outlier site in the San Juan mountains of Colorado, Chimney Rock. This is the highest elevation (7000 ft above sea level) Chacoan site, and perhaps the most distant from the cultural center at Chaco Canyon, A thousand years ago it was home to about 2000 people, with a typical Chaco great house, kivas, and granaries. But its real significance is as an astronomical observatory for an infrequent event, the lunar standstill, which occurs once every 18.6 years. We were there in 2007 for the last lunar standstill, when the full moon rises directly between two rock towers. Make plans now for the next one in 2025. Learn more here, in an essay written by my sweetie, Elizabeth Dodd, and published in Notre Dame Magazine. This place defies description, but if anyone can do that, it would be her. This is the view from the observatory site, and you can see the full moon just peeking into the notch between the two towers.
A closeup of the moonrise.
A Prairie Falcon on one of the towers. If you look at the wider angle image above, you might be able to spot him there as well.
Heading down the trail after the moonrise and looking back at the towers.
SiubhanDuinne
Stunning. Breathtaking.
It’s hard to pick a favourite — not that anyone has to — but I’m particularly taken with moonrise peeping out from between the towers. The moon looks almost translucent instead of the dust-covered rock we know it to be.
andy
Wow, thanks, you showed me something new. I did not know they had dressed stone structures that far north!
Tenar Arha
Wonderful!
Barbara
Wonderful pictures. Thank you!
?BillinGlendaleCA
Yet another place I will never go, I’ll just have to see via Albatrossity’s photos.
Elizabelle
Otherworldly. And have skimmed and bookmarked Elizabeth’s essay. It deserves further attention.
Currants
Gorgeous—thank you Albatrossity! I lived on the Navajo reservation for a year a while back (teaching)—and if you learned the type of site to pay attention to, you could find ruins all over. Well, by that I mean hiking off road, which was okay because we lived there but you’d need a permit otherwise. (In small canyons, the structures and usually art, if any, would be on east or southeast facing sides.) Do you know whether these are from the same groups as the ones you mentioned? For example, the ruins in the Canyon de Chelly?
frosty
More places to see that I didn’t have on my list! Great pictures, too.
Wag
Great phots , as alway. To learn more about the Chaco culture I would highly recommend a book by David Roberts, The Lost World of the Old Ones. It is an exploration of recent research about the Chaco culture and offers a balanced discussion of various theories about where the Chaco residents went, as well as a personal meditation about how we currently interact with the lost ruins of their civilization. A great book by a wonderful writer.
smike
Nice stuff. We have started enjoying an annual visit to Pagosa Springs for the last few years (escaping Tx heat for a bit), and I recall the views of Chimney Rock when going to Durango for a day trip. Your post prompted me to learn more about the site. Thanks.
Origuy
Stunning pictures. I went to Mesa Verde a few years ago and learned about Hovenweep. Wanted to go there ever since. Chimney Rock looks very cool, too.
OzarkHillbilly
@Currants: You ain’t just a woofin’. My little Sis taught on the res for 3 or 4 years back in the 90s. I took my sons out there for a visit and they had some ruins just a few hundred yards from the trailer park they lived in. Took a day trip to a “lost” canyon deep in a pinion forest. At one point we stopped and I got out to pee. Looking about I suddenly realized I was peeing on pottery shards. The road was practically paved with them.
Albatrossity
@Elizabelle:
Yes, Elizabeth’s essay is probably the best place to learn more about the amazing astronomical skills of the Chaco people. In the original iteration, the published magazine, they included several of my pictures. They slimmed it down for the website by getting rid of the pics, but now that you have seen these, the essay will speak to you, I suspect.
Albatrossity
@Currants: I think there are lots of speculations about the people from Hovenweep and Canyon de Chelly and where their descendants are now. It is a mystery that may never get solved.
Miki
Wow. Again.
SkyBluePink
Magnificent!
J R in WV
Your sweety writes as well as you do. Great piece of history, well shared.
Thanks for the photos. We did Chaco and Canyon de Chelly, didn’t make it quite so far north as Hovenweep and Mesa Verde.
The walls themselves are astounding for a people with no iron tools!
Thanks for sharing this with us !!
Albatrossity
@J R in WV: Ha! My sweetie writes a hell of a lot better than I do! But thank you for the compliment.
You might enjoy her book, Horizon’s Lens, which has a lot of essays about the desert southwest, petroglyphs, etc.
J R in WV
@Albatrossity:
Thanks for the recommendation / link!! I was trying to compliment both of you, may have missed…
central texas
I would also recommend “House of Rain” by Craig Childs. Craig does a good job of exploring several of the current explanations for the rise, flourishing, and decay of the Chaco and associated civilizations. He is a long term resident and insightful writer about the desert southwest. The book is based on his own travels and many exchanges with the archeologists presently working in the SW.
Bill Dunlap
At Hovenweep, you can get a map from the ranger at HQ that will lead you to some smaller, remote ruins away from the main canyon complex. You need to hike or have a 4X4 to get to them, but when you do you will be alone. The back road to these will lead you to Cortez for lunch.
mattH
Man, so late to this, but a few things. Lowry Pueblo (ironically up the dirt road a looong ways east from Hovenweep in Colorado) is the northernmost and (likely) furthest Chacoan Outlier. Bluff Great House might be further, but it’s not 100% clear its “Great Kiva” is big enough (14m vs a minimum of 20+m for most classifications) and was never completely excavated, so it we don’t know if it has the requisite floor features. Nobody knows about Lowry because it’s not impressive and in the middle of nowhere; no visitor’s center, no amazing location like Chimney Rock, no “crazy” reconstruction like Aztec, no huge concentration like Chaco proper. And I’m not suggesting anyone go unless you really are just looking for a less-trod site, but it is important as it’s close to one of the largest pre-Columbian communities in the Southwest, Yellowjacket Pueblo.
As for where they went, it’s not that hard. The living Pueblo groups. The current Western Pueblos are all larger than the pre-contact sites. Concentration and consolidation is the pattern.