Eroded Boulder House. They built INSIDE the rock. How cool is that?!
Boulder House, built on a boulder set apart from the canyon walls. You can see the steps they carved in the rock to get to the door.
Twin Towers, in Little Ruin Canyon.
Not sure which one this is, though I *think* it's Tower Point, or maybe one of the ones in the smaller areas of the park.
Hovenweep Castle, again in Little Ruin Canyon.
Hovenweep NM is in the middle of nowhere, straddling the Utah-Colorado border, not on the way to anywhere, but it's only about 50 miles from several cities. It was well worth the drive out there, and you can see much of it in one day, especially if you get started before noon, unlike us. LOL! At the visitor center, you'll learn about the ruins, and if you take the 2-mile loop through Little Ruin Canyon, you'll see roughly a dozen ruins. The trail is mostly flat, going around the edge of the canyon, on slickrock. At the end, it descends into the canyon and back out again.
There are three other areas of the park, not contiguous, that are (mostly) reachable by passenger car. I'm not sure I would've attempted some of those roads in the van, however. And there's one that they recommend a high-clearance vehicle. They're not kidding. Or, you can hike the .8 miles to see that group. The overcast skies that had been such a blessing in keeping the weather cool became a curse as darkness came early. Bruce didn't want to attempt the "high clearance" section in the Pilot, and I don't blame him. It started off down a steep grade and over a couple of large boulders. Add the growing darkness and the expansive feel of being all alone for miles and miles, and well, we'll just have to see that group another time.
Most of the ruins, including many of the cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde, were built in the 1200s. Mesa Verde has many that date from earlier, and the park documents the way the ancients moved from on top of the mesa to the cliff dwellings and back again. Everything in Hovenweep was built from about 1200 to 1275 or so. And then it was abandoned. Theories as to why abound, but it seems that it was a combination of factors. There was a 23-year long drought; perhaps they'd over-farmed the surrounding land, and there is evidence of internal strife. Of course, the strife may have been brought on by the shrinking resources, or it may have been exacerbated by it. No one knows for certain, but they continue to dig and research.
The people who lived here did not just disappear, however. It would seem that they migrated south to the Rio Grande river, where the Zuni and other Peubloan people still live today. These people may also have been the ancestors of the Hopi; possibly the Utes, but not the Navajo and it appears that the Freemont culture so prevalent in other areas of Utah was NOT related to them either. Attempts at DNA testing have been made, but the present-day Native Americans don't trust white scientists to be respectful (can you really blame them?), and say they don't need to know the results anyway. So, the results remain a secret. Perhaps as relationships between Native Americans and Anglos improve, we'll know.
The area is a veritable gold mine of Ancient Puebloan ruins, and it's just amazing. There is the Canyon of the Ancients National Monument, run by the BLM (not the Park Service) and I got the feeling that there was some inter-agency turf wars going on there. The Park Service had very little information about the Canyon of the Ancients Monument, instead directing us to the Anasazi Heritage Center in Delores, CO, headquarters of the Monument. Even the Visitors Center in Cortez, CO had very little information about it, which is rather odd considering the mountains of information they had about every National Park for 100 miles.
So, yeah, Canyon of the Ancients will have to happen on another trip. I hear that there are some spectacular ruins to be seen there, including some that you can actually enter. And, a ranger in Mesa Verde told me that there are far more ruins on the nearby Tribal lands as well. Some of which you can arrange to tour. Add that to the list of things I must see before I die! At this rate, I can't ever die....too many amazing wonders to see!
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