by Steve

Chaco Canyon - the center of Ancestral Puebloan culture

You may not know about Chaco Canyon or Chaco Cultural Center. But if you've traveled in the southwest United States, you will no doubt have encountered cliff dwellings or references to ancestral Puebloans. Cliff dwellings are found all over the southwest, especially in the four corners region. Mesa Verde and Chimney Rock in Colorado. Canyon de Chelley, Walnut Canyon, and Montezuma Castle in Arizona. And Hovenweep and Bears Ears in Utah. These are just a few of the hundreds of sites where ancient civilizations left their mark on the land in the form of cliff dwellings or pueblos. We've been to many of these sites over the past few years, and one of the things that they have in common is that they all make reference to Chaco Canyon as the center of Puebloan culture. Chaco Canyon is one of the oldest pueblo sites; many of the other pueblos and cliff dwellings that you can visit in the southwest were established by people from Chaco. Ancient roads connected many of these sites.

This past fall (Oct 2019) we decided to visit Chaco Canyon. Chaco Culture National Historic Park is located in northwest New Mexico, south of Farmington and northeast of Gallup. After traveling about 50 miles from Farmington (the nearest place to stay) on paved roads, you still have around 22 miles to go on dirt/gravel roads. While this doesn't sound too bad, these dirt roads turned out to be some of the roughest washboard roads we've been on. The park website advises you to check weather and road conditions before coming to the park, as rains may make some of the roads impassable.

Chaco Canyon was home to many large, multi-room pueblos. Like the one pictured above, they had hundreds of rooms and multiple large kivas. While these are not as well preserved as the ones at Mesa Verde, they are larger and the number of visitors is so much lower that you have an all-around better experience. Here you can explore on your own, staying out of places you should not go, but moving at your own desired pace. We spent an entire day here and could easily have spent more time.

 Here's a very large kiva. Could probably hold a couple hundred people.

We climbed up the canyon walls to get a better look at this large semi-circular shaped pueblo. Note the large courtyards. As you might expect, it faces south.

You may have noticed that we use the term "Ancestral Puebloans" when referring to the peoples who lived here, rather than the term "Anasazi," which had been in use for many years. There's a bit of history to this change. When Europeans moved across the west exploring this vast country, they encountered many different people groups. After meeting a tribe in one area, the Europeans would typically ask their hosts for the name of the next tribe that they would encounter on their journey.  If the two tribes were enemies, the name that the Europeans were told was typically not how the next tribe referred to themselves. Rather it was often a derogatory name, like their word for "enemy" or "idiot." Despite being incorrect, these names often stuck and were used by European settlers for a long time.

The word "Anasazi" is the Navajo term for "ancient enemy."  Not surprisingly, this is not how the people they referred to themselves. When the park service finally asked the current descendants (there are 19 Pueblo tribes; you can learn more about them here) what their ancestors should be called, the term "Ancestral Puebloan" was chosen as the best way to refer to the people groups who lived in these large pueblos all across the southwest.

We thoroughly enjoyed Chaco Culture National Historic Park. While getting there has its challenges, once you are in the park the roads and facilities are good. There is a small campground where you can stay overnight, which would be a good option for a visit of two or three days. I would not, however, recommend taking a motorhome there.