EXPLORING CHACO CANYON (With History, Information, Hikes, etc.)

Good morning. It is sunrise. Actually it's a little bit before sunrise. The sun hasn't quite come up yet. I'm leaving the campground early because I want to beat the crowds. Let me give you a little bit of a background on the area and the people that used to live here, the Native Americans that used to live here. I spent last night reading four or five or six little pamphlets that I got from the from the visitor center. And so I'll try to condense what I've learned into a minute or so here. So Chacoan culture thrived here from about 850 to about 1150 AD. And they were still around a little bit before and after that, but that's the time when they were most active in building. And building is what the Chacoan culture or civilization, whatever you want to call it, is known for. They made these huge buildings called great houses. These are multi-story buildings with hundreds of rooms spanning hundreds of feet. The weird thing is that these weren't places where people lived continually year-round. They were places that had maybe 50 to 100 people year-round populations. And then throughout the year there would be ceremonies and celebrations and, you know, trading events, commerce things, where people would come in from the surrounding areas, the surrounding communities. And that's when the the numbers would swell and a lot of people would be there in the area. The people that lived here are the ancestors of today's Hopi and Pueblo people. The Navajo also have some ties to this area. The Navajo have been in this area for the last few hundred years, but it wasn't really their ancestors that built these structures. Today in the park, some of the the big structures, some of the great houses, have been excavated. Some haven't. The ones that have been excavated, they've been kind of restored a little bit because once you excavate them, once you take out all the sand and everything that has blown in there, you expose the walls more to the elements and, you know, there's no material holding them up anymore. And so they have to be propped up a little bit and restored a little bit. One interesting stat that I read is that 225,000 logs were needed to build the great houses in Chaco Canyon. That's crazy. The logs came from 50 to 70 miles away from the mountain ranges. The logs were cut, left there for a year to dry so that they were lighter, and then hauled down the mountain to here. In addition to the great houses that were here in Chaco Canyon, there were smaller villages where people lived. But again, the the great houses were more of like public buildings used for special occasions, really, which is very strange considering all the time and manpower and expense and resources used in building them. There are several of these different great houses or ruins of the great houses that you can visit here in the park. I'm going to be going to the biggest one first called Pueblo Bonito. I read all through the little guide last night. I found some things that I want to talk about and so hopefully I'll get there early and there won't be too many other people around and I can show you the different ways that they built and the different features of the great houses and things like that. Pueblo Bonito is what one of the one of the little pamphlets referred to as downtown Chaco. That was the hub. That was the biggest of the great houses and roads from all different areas and roads from the different great houses in this area all pointed directly at Pueblo Bonito. Here's an artist's rendition of what Pueblo Bonito would have looked one of the great houses. Basically it's d-shaped and there's a central plaza area. These circles are kivas or great kivas. These are underground circular ceremonial structures so they would have religious rites and ceremonies and gatherings there. They were meeting places. Each kiva had a rectangular hole in the top and a ladder sticking out of the hole and that's how people would enter and exit and along the back here you see a bunch of rooms. You see that it's multi-storied and yeah that's basically basically how it was supposed to have looked. You can see the people here for scale. Really big structure. Here's another artist's representation. Same kind of thing. So there's a I think a nine mile long scenic loop road that's one way that goes through this valley here which is Chaco Canyon. All right this is the parking area for Pueblo Bonito and another big great house called Chetro Kettle. I am the first one here. Yes that is what I like. I'm the first and currently only one here. Sun has just come up. Perfect. Let's go exploring. These are the ruins out here. There's a little bit of a trail to get to the ruins and then there's a trail that goes through the ruins and the trail that goes through the ruins has numbered markers along the way from what I understand and that's what this is for. This has information about each one of the numbered stops but this sign here says that there were 600 rooms here. Four and five stories tall covering three acres. Two plazas. Dozens of ceremonial kivas. Check out these walls. These are very impressive. Beautiful masonry work. Beautiful stonework. These sections are a good 20-25 feet tall. These big boulders behind the ruins are what remains of what was called Threatening Rock. The rock was on the cliff here attached to the cliff and there was a big crack behind it and the Native Americans put sticks in the crack called pahos or prayer sticks and they because they recognized the threat that this thing placed. They even built a masonry wall below the big boulder to try to keep it up but in 1922, following a year of especially heavy rains, the boulder detached and crushed a few of the rooms that were part of the great house. Here's more of an overview, a bird's eye view of the place. It's big. It's really big. You can see the taller rooms are on the back. You can see the circular kivas over here. You can see a big kiva, a great kiva over here. And again, more taller walls back here. This is where the multi-story parts would have been. Multi-story sections. You can see over here how thick the walls are at the bottom. This is a good three feet thick right here. Three feet thick to support the multiple stories up on top and the walls get thinner as you go higher. This is a good cross-section of one of the walls. The middle part is a mixture of of stones and cement and mortar, I mean. There's a good amount of mortar in there. And then the walls, the facade here, is mostly stone. And then there would have been a veneer of plaster on the outside. The plaster veneer would have protected the walls from, mostly from rain, from the elements. Several of the pamphlets I read said that you can identify the age of the great house that you're looking at by the, I guess, the pattern or the style of the masonry on the outside. Earlier ones have a certain style and later ones have a certain style. Mostly the later ones have less and less mortar. This is the back wall of Pueblo Bonito. Huge wall. In the late 1800s, before there were any kind of protection laws for this kind of thing, travelers and vandals and amateur archaeologists busted a bunch of holes in this back wall to get to the rooms that were on the other side. Looks like they've done a relatively good job of restoring it though. It's being propped up, as you can see, by these big old beams. You can see the beams here and where more beams would have been between the levels. This is the great big plaza. One of a couple of the plazas here. I think this over here is the second one. You can see Akiva right here. These four circles were basically footings for large beams that went up and supported the roof. There's a low masonry bench around the whole perimeter of the room. This is a fire box. The fire would have been in here. Fire pit. And this is a reflector. It would have reflected the heat around the room. The modern-day Puebloan Native Americans here still use kivas. They use them for, let's see, there's a list here, for religious worship, preparation, dance, prayer vigils, public gatherings, and other activities. And so it's thought that the ancestral Puebloans, the people that lived here, would have used kivas for the same reason. And there would have been a roof on here with a square opening in the middle of the roof with a ladder going down. That's how you get in and out of the kiva. I read a couple of different things about these square boxes. Apparently, they were used for different things and different kivas. Some were just filled with sand. Some were, they thought, were where they would germinate seeds. Some were just little storage boxes. And here's a smaller kiva. I've got to crawl through this one. Another one. This is a great little room with a good cross-section here. So I think that this white stuff here and here, I think this is some of the original plaster. Obviously, there's not much of it left. These big beams were the main supporting roof beams. They would go this way. Then the smaller ones would be placed on top going this way, going the other direction. And then there'd be a layer of mud and bark on top of that. Now it formed the floor of the next level up. You can see here, you've got the first story, second story, let's see, second story, and then the third story up there. On the ground here, we've got a metate, which is a grinding stone. They would take a smaller, more circular stone and use that to grind corn. The pamphlet is saying that it's hard to determine what a room's function was, but that rooms in this section were probably not used for living quarters because there weren't deep fire pits. Mostly, they were probably just used for storage. And again, 225,000 trees. Unreal. There are four different kinds of doors used in the architecture here. This is a T-shaped door, which is interesting. And then there are corner doors, which I'll show you in a minute. And small doors with high sills, large doors with low sills. I don't know which is which here. These are examples of the corner doorways. This particular corner doorway is interesting. I'll read to you from the pamphlet here. The doorway here appears to function as an astronomical marker. When the sun rises on the morning of the winter solstice, sunlight passes through the opening and strikes the opposite of room behind it. I hope you enjoyed that. That was Pueblo Bonito. Took me about 35 minutes to walk through it. It was tremendously helpful to have read that pamphlet last night because I marked the things that I wanted to see and talk about and I didn't have to stand and read each one word for word when I was at the marker. Walking back to the car now. I'll be there in a few minutes. I'm still the only one here, which is amazing. And I'm gonna do a little hike. There's a walk along the cliff edge here that passes several pictographs and petroglyphs and inscriptions. Actually, I don't know if there are pictographs, but I know there are petroglyphs and inscriptions. So I'll check those out. I had to go back to the car to get the petroglyph trail guide and it goes from Pueblo Bonito over here along the cliff to a second great house, which you can't really see, over here called Chetro Kettle. It's not a long trail. It's a quarter of a mile long. But I do have to go back to Pueblo Bonito because it starts back over there. You can see these long slits. These are... they think that these are sharpening grooves to sharpen an arrowhead or something like that. Kind of hard to see with the sun here, but there's a row of kind of a rubble... grubbly looking rocky mounds right here. And those are unexcavated buildings or walls or something. So you see these holes up against the cliff. Actually, some of those groove marks right underneath them. The holes are where beams would go. The ends of beams. And so this cliff forms the back wall of a building or some buildings. At some point, there were rooms right there. Nothing there now. Not even really any rubble. There's some petroglyphs on this kind of brown circle part. Here's a bird. That's a really neat one. Really hard to see. If I didn't know it was there because of this little marker on the ground, there's no way I would see it. The people here traded things like turquoise for seashells and see very often. These have been incised or scratched into the rock. Whereas usually, they're pecked like this. I like this one. Looks like a boogeyman. So that's it for the petroglyph trail. I'm at Chetro Kettle now. As long as I'm here, I will wander around and look at this site. I have a pamphlet for this one too. I'm not going to go into a ton of detail at this site. Since I went through Pueblo Bonito pretty thoroughly, I think I can safely just kind of take a superficial look at these other ones. But I did take some notes when I read this last night. This was constructed from about 1000 to 1100 AD and there were 500 rooms here. There's a long, long back wall here. There used to be balconies sticking out the second and third floor from the windows here. This is what they would have looked like. And it says these balconies were intact in 1901. Within 20 years, they were gone due to scavenging for firewood and building materials. Doesn't that just make your heart break a little bit? So this is an above ground kiva that was... it looks like it's multi-storied, but it was just one story and tall. Here's a look at some of the other rooms in the site here. This is interesting. You've got some much smaller, thinner stonework. And these are much bigger stones. I want to say that this one is newer and that this one is older, but don't quote me on that. Here's a little diagram showing the different styles and types of the outer walls. Several small kivas here. And then this is the great kiva, the big one. Pretty similar to that other one we saw at Pueblo Bonito. Got the four places for the beams. Got the fire pit in the middle. There's two rectangular boxes to the side of the fire pit. Our floor vaults. Got the row of seating around the outside. It's 8 30. Definitely more people are showing up now. I just passed my first group here and I'm seeing several other vehicles driving out on the road out there. It's a shame. It's nice to have it to myself while it lasted for about an hour, hour and a half there. So I'm kind of in an open area right now. This is where the plaza was. It's above the surrounding area. So right here where I am is above this area down here. It's 12 feet above the surrounding area and that's not natural. That was man-made. The people here hauled in literally tons and tons of earth to make that plaza higher up above the surrounding area. Okay, I think that's it for Chetro Kettle. Now I'm gonna go do a hike. I'm gonna hike to... I think basically it's the rim above Pueblo Bonito here on the mesa up there. There are more ruins and apparently really nice views of Pueblo Bonito. So that's what I'm interested in seeing. It's relatively long. It's like five and a half miles long, I think. But there are lots of little things to see along the way so it should be really interesting. Yeah, this is Pueblo del Arroyo or Pueblo of the Wash. The dry wash is out here. Chaco Wash is out here. I might explore this more later but for now I'm gonna hike off this way past another set of ruins or two and then the trail will lead me up and over around in here. So this is Quincletso. 1100s. So the sign here says that you should note the large blocks used in the walls. Yeah, definitely this is much larger than what I've seen at the other sites. This was built much later than the others. Well, comparatively later than the others. And it also lacks the D shape the other great houses and there's no kiva here. Not a ton to see at this one. It's kind of a rectangular complex of rooms. A few stories high. Right behind it is the Pueblo Alto Trail which is what I will be doing. The loop. Another 4.8 miles past here. And the trail goes up this way and then, I don't know, up here somewhere. I think it might go up the cleft in the rock over here or over here. Here's a map. So I'm here at Quincletso going this way and then I'll do a loop either around here or over here. It goes to a couple other great houses and some overlooks and has a prehistoric road. Overlook of Pueblo Bonito and Chetro Kettle. Seems like a nice mix of everything. Got some ruins and some... I think there are some steps, some old steps, cut into the rock that you can see. And yes, all sorts of neat little things. Overlooks. And here's one last nice look at Quincletso as I'm hiking above it. Yeah, sure enough, the path goes through that cleft in the rock over here. Oh, very cool. Yeah, so this is a natural passage that the original people here would have taken also up to the top. So these are interesting. These are the burrows of ancient shrimp. Got a nice little grinding groove here on the rock overlooking Quincletso. The trail just follows cairns across the top of the mesa here. Here are a couple of pecked basins about, I don't know, 10 inches or a foot in diameter. The brochure says that they were often pecked into sandstone ledges like this. Benches. Sometimes they were round. Sometimes they were rectangular. And they don't know exactly what they were used for but said some basins contained turquoise and may have been repositories for offerings. So here's a stone circle. These are rings that are generally 25 to 100 feet in diameter and archaeologists think that they were used for ceremonies. So far most of the things that I've shown you have been marked. Like there's a sign back there saying stone circle but they don't explain what the thing is and so you really want to get the booklet. This one is the backcountry trail guide. I'm sorry about the wind. I know it's annoying. It's more annoying for me than for you because I have to listen to it several times when I edit the video. This sign here says shrimp burrows. Yeah here's more of them. And here. And here. And then here is Pueblo Bonito from above. That is awesome. You can see some people sitting down there for scale. Well that is very impressive. So I'm going to continue on the loop now. You can just hike to this point and then go back down if you just want the view. I'm sorry again for the wind, for the noise, and it was hard to get a steady shot because I was zoomed in because of the wind. Okay headed now to Pueblo Alto and the Pueblo Alto loop. Here are some steps the Chacoans made right here. I guess to get up and over this little sandstone hump here. So here's a Chacoan road and the booklet says that the roads were cleared areas so like this with rocks along the edges, the rock borders. It says whenever Chacoan road builders encountered a cliff they constructed stairways or ramps to continue the straight road alignments. The roads may have been used to direct travelers to Chaco for ceremonies and trading. Roads may have symbolically connected distant communities to Chaco to center their world. Please do not walk on the road or move the rocks. Seeing some ruins over here to the left. There are several little groups of ruins here and they're all called the Pueblo Alto Complex together. There's Pueblo Alto itself, New Alto, East Ruin, and Rabbit Run or Rabbit Ruin. Maybe that's a typo. I don't know. Let's go to New Alto first. I just got to a sign. So New Alto is that one. Pueblo Alto is this mound over here. I think this mound over here is another set. Here is New Alto. Built in the 1100s. Two stories and 58 rooms. Here's the circular pit that was Akiva. I like this. It's definitely not as big or expansive as the other ruins but there also aren't ropes and signs everywhere telling you to stay off. You still don't want to go climbing around on walls or anything like that but you can kind of wander wherever you want. Wow look how beautiful this wall is. That looks like a modern brick wall almost. Now let's follow these trails over to Pueblo Alto which is bigger and older than New Alto. The booklet says that only five percent of the rooms show evidence of habitation so was not used much as far as like a permanent dwelling place. The larger groups would travel here periodically for ceremonies, for trade, for gatherings, and for the ceremonial breaking of pottery. I think this up here, this mound, is the midden for Pueblo Alto. Basically the trash heap. And this one is especially large. They found a lot of pottery in the midden when it was excavated and so they think that this is a spot where people came to, on purpose, break their pottery for some ceremonial reason. More shrimp tracks. Shrimp burrows. Here's Jackson Stairway. That's a set of steps that the Native Americans carved in to provide quicker access from this upper mesa and then the lower area down below. Yep those are steep all right. Here's a little piece of pottery. Here's some interesting fossils of shells I would assume. Here's my hand for scale. It says here ramp view. I've got a ramp over here. This mound is a ramp to get up and over the cliff band. So here's looking down at the top of the ramp. I thought that this part was the ramp just like the mound but I think this is the ramp and that it came this way toward where I am now because you can see the walls on either side. Wall here. Wall here. The scale of this place and the scale of the of the earthworks and the construction, it's really impressive. This is more than just a couple of cliff dwellings. A cluster of cliff dwellings put together. I mean this is engineering on a on another scale. Like I've been to the pyramids at Teotihuacan outside of Mexico City and that's the closest thing that I can think of to what this is like. Obviously this isn't quite as grand or, you know, outwardly impressive as the pyramids but same kind of thing. Like just tons and tons of resources and manpower required to construct these buildings and these ramps and roads and all this stuff. It's really impressive. Here's another look at Chetro Kettle from above. We've got this West Valley here. They've got a road shower on top, spare tire, this little cargo box thing, some roto packs, gas cans. I don't know what this is. Cool little vehicle. Okay back at the car. Took me about two hours 45 minutes to do that whole loop. And it was about five and a half miles. Something like that. That was great. I enjoyed that. Lots of interesting little things to see along the way. It's not even 12 yet. It's 11 45. So I've got plenty of time for lunch. I think I'll just have some triscuits with cheese and some grapes and just sit and enjoy it for a little while and enjoy not moving. Okay I am sufficiently fed and watered. I'm going to go check out this great house that's just right at the parking lot here. This is Pueblo del Arroyo. I don't think I'm going to record any footage of it. I don't think there's much to show you that I haven't already shown you. So I'm just going to go check it out by myself. And then there's a hike I want to do called I think the South Mesa. Yeah South Mesa Trail. It's a 4.1 mile loop and it goes up and around this mesa. So it goes up this mesa and then there's a great house over there and it comes back down this way. When I asked the woman at the visitor center what her favorite trails in the park were, she said that the one I just did, the Pueblo Alto Loop, and then that one, the South Mesa Trail. So sounds good to me. So after I explore this little one, I will continue driving around the loop to get to the trailhead for the South Mesa. Okay so I'm at Pueblo del Arroyo and this actually is kind of interesting. So this is a three-walled area. Three-walled building. Wall here, wall here, and wall here. Apparently there are only a dozen of these in the whole of the Four Corners region. And archaeologists aren't entirely certain. They aren't sure what this was used for but probably some sort of special ceremonial ritual or some special ceremony. This section here was three stories tall when it was completed. This is what's called a keyhole kiva because it has this little notch at one end. Well that little ruin right next to the parking lot was actually more interesting than I thought it would be. And the pamphlet was saying that in one of the rooms, when they excavated it, they found the skeletons of three small macaws. It's like the colorful birds like parrots. Very colorful birds. Apparently they were brought up here live from Mexico and so they lived here for a little while but they probably didn't last very long because the skeletons were still pretty small when they were found. So they didn't live long in this in this climate. I think this is significantly colder than what they're used to. Okay, time to head off to the next trailhead for the South Mesa Trail. So this is Chaco Wash that I'm crossing right now and I read something in one of the pamphlets about how a hundred years ago someone mentioned that the wash was, I don't know, a few feet deep and 18 feet across. But now it's 100 feet across and 40 feet deep in some places. It's much wider and much deeper and that's the result of overgrazing in this area. The cattle destroyed the natural vegetation that was basically holding everything into place. And so whenever it rains there's nothing to really hold back the water so a lot more water is going through that wash than there used to be. Okay, I'm at the trailhead for South Mesa Casa Rinconada. There's another great house and that's right out here. So I'll be passing by that. You can see that here Casa Rinconada. And then I'm going to go up this trail to Tzin Kletzin which is another great house and then take the trail back. So it's a loop trail to two great houses. I don't think either of great houses is particularly impressive but I think... I know that the second one is unexcavated and I think the scenery is just supposed to be nice on this hike so we'll see. I'm not going to take much footage on this hike. I just want to enjoy it and, you know, I might... I'll take a little bit of footage of the ruins of both sets of ruins but apart from that I'm not going to do much I don't think. So this is the largest excavated great kiva in Chaco Canyon and one of the largest in the whole of the Chacoan world. It is quite large. Here's the kiva at Tzin Kletzin. This site is completely unexcavated and unrestored. It was built in around 1100 and there were 70 rooms here. So these ruins aren't vast or expansive or really all that interesting to be honest but the trail up here is enjoyable. I haven't seen any other people up here. It's fun hiking above the area on this plateau on this mesa up here. I actually have had good phone coverage. Good AT&T phone coverage for most of the hike. Not really a spectacular ruin and probably not worth hiking to unless you want solitude. If you're looking for solitude this is a great spot. There was one other car in the parking lot and compare that with the dozens of cars in that last parking lot I was at. Big difference but also not as spectacular. So you need to weigh that up and figure out really what you're interested in. But for me I'm glad I did this. It was worth the hike for me and it's still not even halfway over. I think the trail kind of turns and then starts to head back via a different route. So yeah great day out. Not too hot. Not too cold. Pretty good temperatures. A little bit windy but overall I'm having a good time. I really like this spot. So I've been sitting here for about half an hour just relaxing. It's been really nice except now the wind is picking up so I'm gonna hit the road again. So the trail here is heading to this gap. This is called South Gap. Pueblo Bonito is just around the corner here. All the big big ruins are just around the corner and apparently all sorts of Chacoan roads ran through this valley and converged at the gap before going to Pueblo Bonito. Okay I'm almost back to the car. Enjoyable hike. Not great ruins except for that great kiva at the start of the hike here at Casa Rinconada or whatever it's called. There's another Chacoan stairway here carved into the rock so I'm gonna stop and check it out. Back to the hot, dusty, shadeless, crowded, expensive, noisy, smoky campground. There are only a couple last things I'm gonna do today that are ruin and archaeology related and that is to find some rock art and look at the cliff dwellings here in the campground. Okay so the first place is on the boulder across from the Tentaloop Restroom in the campground. The Tentaloop is over here. This is the restroom and I guess the boulder over here is the boulder in question. So this is the little building or cliff dwelling behind the campground here. Not much to it. I think it's just that. There might be some more ruins over here. So these were built between 1150 and 1200 and are probably used by families that farmed in this area. Not super interesting but worth visiting just because they're within walking distance if you're in the campground. So this is the second area of rock art. It's up here from this sign. This is what it looked like before but then people have graffitied all over it over the years. I found some more. I kept walking along the path and saw these. And then here's the fire pit in the campground. It looks like there are quite a few directly behind it. They're a bit hard to see but they're there. Well I think that'll do it for today's video. It's 4 30 and I'm done for the day. I'm tired. Tired of filming. Tired of talking to the camera. I'm just gonna hang out and relax for the rest of the day. But overall I really enjoyed my time here. This is a really cool place. Pueblo Bonito in particular, that first one that I went to this morning, is spectacular. It's a really must-see place. And let's see what else. The trail up to the top of the mesa and then around to the viewpoint of Pueblo Bonito was worth doing. That stairway was really cool. Lots of lots of cool stuff today. I really had a good time today. I had a good time taking my time on that on that second hike, the one up to South Mesa. It was nice to just sit on a rock and enjoy the surroundings, not have any people around. And yeah, it was a good day. I really enjoyed this place. I'll definitely be coming back in the future. There's more that I could have done today. There's more that I still could do today. I still have, you know, three and a half hours of daylight left. But I like leaving things undone, especially things that I want to do. There are some really cool petroglyphs and pictographs here that I want to go see still. There's some pictographs that, I think it's called the supernova pictograph. It depicts a hand and then a crescent moon and then what looks like a supernova. And so I really want to go see that. Based on Chinese and Japanese records, archaeologists know that there was a supernova that happened in like the 11th or 12th century here. And the Chacoans probably would have seen it. And so that's why they think that they made that pictograph. And then there are other hikes I could do, other great houses to see. Still another trip's worth of activities, at least. For dinner tonight, I'll just have the rest of my sloppy joe mix and probably some grapes too. And I'm just gonna relax. It'll be nice. So thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed today's video. Let me know what your favorite part was. You won't see much more of this place tomorrow. I'm leaving in the morning and heading out. So thanks again for watching and I'll see you in the next video.