Chaco Culture National Historical Park

We left Monument Valley, driving south and east to Bloomfield, New Mexico.  This was our base camp for exploring Chaco Culture National Historical Park.  The park is surrounded by reservation land and we had to drive about 10 miles on a bumpy dirt road to get there.

We took a ranger-lead tour and she referred to the people who lived here as "Chacoans," since they lived in the Chaco Canyon.  Another name for them is the Anasazi (becoming less popular, however) and Ancient Pueboans.  There are lot of mysteries about what happened here.  There are some "great houses" with hundreds of rooms and sometimes four stories that were very well built.  These were surrounded by smaller villages.  It is thought that perhaps leaders (political or religious) lived in the great houses where ceremonies were conducted.  But it is also possible that people came together here over a wide region to trade or conduct special services.  What remains is very impressive.

 There are also petroglyphs.

The largest village (great house) had about 700 rooms.  It was the largest structure in North America during its time (about 700 to 1200 AD).  Trees were used for the ceilings and they had to be carried from over 50 miles away.

The craftsmanship of the workers is very impressive - square corners, straight walls, and uniform stones.  There was one kiva (used for ceremonies) that could old 450 to 500 people.

This was a thriving community for hundreds of years (similar to the cliff dwellings) and then the people left.  We have very little information about their lives except for broken pottery and the buildings they left behind.