Chaco Culture National Historic Park
When Gavin first mentioned this park and I saw where it was and description of the road in there, my first thought was "oh, hell no!" As terrifying as the road conditions sound, this park is 100% worth the white-knuckle, bone-rattling drive in, it is that amazing. The drive starts on paved road, then goes to unpaved but maintained county road, to 4 miles of unmaintained sheer chaos of ruts & bumps strong enough to pop the screws out of the hinge of one of our cupboard doors. That's some impressive bumps, I would say. Once you navigate the road of chaos, you arrive to a perfectly paved park entrance road & paved roads throughout the park. I think the point of leaving the last 4 miles unpaved & unmaintained, must be to limit the number of visitors to the site.
Back to the park: The park exists because of massive buildings, built by the ancestral Pueblo peoples between 850 and 1250 A.D. The buildings are a testament to their organizational and engineering abilities, not seen anywhere else in the American Southwest. Satellite images
have shown roads leading straight into Chaco, indicating that it was, at one time, the central complex for all business of the area. No joke, the "roads" of the time go straight up over mesas. Don't bother going around, just dig a staircase into the mesa and go up and over. I didn't get any good pics of the remnants of staircases, so here's one from the web.
There are a number of existing buildings at Chaco that are in various states of excavation. We hiked and/or biked to most of them. The highlight was hiking up onto the mesa and looking back down on to Pueblo Bonito, the largest of the ruins. Being able to look back down on the structure gave you a much better idea of just how big the structure was. Even though time and elements have reclaimed much of the buildings, there is more than enough left of this structure to tell you just how giant it was. You can walk through the structure, into some of the rooms and look down into the kivas. So. Cool. That speck of blue, on the right, that's Gav. It's speculated that Peublo Bonito was used as a business facility, an office park, if you will. Researchers assume that it was not someone's giant mansion, a la Mar a Lago style. It would have been quite the palace, had it been someone's home.
The different styles of masonry work at different points in time were interesting to see. Even us rookies could tell the differences between some sites, that clearly were built with the influence of architecture and masonry work from outside influences as time progressed. The ability of the Indians to make such perfect 90 degree angles of their walls was insane. We kept trying to figure out how they could get things so perfect, with their existing tools and technology.
Back to the park: The park exists because of massive buildings, built by the ancestral Pueblo peoples between 850 and 1250 A.D. The buildings are a testament to their organizational and engineering abilities, not seen anywhere else in the American Southwest. Satellite images
have shown roads leading straight into Chaco, indicating that it was, at one time, the central complex for all business of the area. No joke, the "roads" of the time go straight up over mesas. Don't bother going around, just dig a staircase into the mesa and go up and over. I didn't get any good pics of the remnants of staircases, so here's one from the web.
There are a number of existing buildings at Chaco that are in various states of excavation. We hiked and/or biked to most of them. The highlight was hiking up onto the mesa and looking back down on to Pueblo Bonito, the largest of the ruins. Being able to look back down on the structure gave you a much better idea of just how big the structure was. Even though time and elements have reclaimed much of the buildings, there is more than enough left of this structure to tell you just how giant it was. You can walk through the structure, into some of the rooms and look down into the kivas. So. Cool. That speck of blue, on the right, that's Gav. It's speculated that Peublo Bonito was used as a business facility, an office park, if you will. Researchers assume that it was not someone's giant mansion, a la Mar a Lago style. It would have been quite the palace, had it been someone's home.
The different styles of masonry work at different points in time were interesting to see. Even us rookies could tell the differences between some sites, that clearly were built with the influence of architecture and masonry work from outside influences as time progressed. The ability of the Indians to make such perfect 90 degree angles of their walls was insane. We kept trying to figure out how they could get things so perfect, with their existing tools and technology.
The other interesting thing about this area is that millions of years ago, it was a sea. So, you see much evidence of sea creatures fossilized in the stone. Below, shrimp tubes and an Aussie hiking up the mesa:
Again, this park is a pain in the ass to get to. It's really not on your way to anywhere, but is very much worth a visit. There is a small campground on site, with no services, but you can reserve a site and there are flushing toilets, so you got that going for you.
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