Travel to Chaco Culture National Historical Park

Chaco Culture National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park hosting the densest and most exceptional concentration of pueblos in the American Southwest. The park is located in northwestern New Mexico, between Albuquerque and Farmington, in a remote canyon cut by the Chaco Wash. Containing the most sweeping collection of ancient ruins north of Mexico, the park preserves one of the United States' most fascinating cultural and historic areas.[1]

Between AD 900 and 1150, Chaco Canyon was a major center of culture for the Ancient Pueblo Peoples.α[›] Chacoans quarried sandstone blocks and hauled timber from great distances, assembling fifteen major complexes which remained the largest buildings in North America until the 19th century.[1][2] Evidence of archaeoastronomy at Chaco has been proposed, with the "Sun Dagger" petroglyph at Fajada Butte a popular example. Many Chacoan buildings may have been aligned to capture the solar and lunar cycles,[3] requiring generations of astronomical observations and centuries of skillfully coordinated construction.[4] Climate change is thought to have led to the emigration of Chacoans and the eventual abandonment of the canyon, beginning with a 50-year drought in 1130.[5]

Composing a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in the arid and inhospitable Four Corners region, the Chacoan cultural sites are fragile; fears of erosion caused by tourists have led to the closure of Fajada Butte to the public. The sites are considered sacred ancestral homelands by the Hopi and Pueblo people, who maintain oral accounts of their historical migration from Chaco and their spiritual relationship to the land.[6][7] Though park preservation efforts can conflict with native religious beliefs, tribal representatives work closely with the National Park Service to share their knowledge and respect the heritage of the Chacoan culture.
Archaeologists identify the first people in the broader San Juan Basin as hunter-gatherers designated as the Archaic; they in turn descended from nomadic Clovis hunters who arrived in the Southwest around 10,000 BC.[18] By approximately 900 BC, these people lived at sites such as Atlatl Cave.[19] The Archaic people left very little evidence of their presence in Chaco Canyon itself. However, by approximately AD 490, their descendants, designated as Basketmakers, were continuously farming within the canyon, living in Shabik'eshchee Village and other pithouse settlements.

A small population of Basketmakers remained in the Chaco Canyon area and developed through several cultural stages until around 800, when they were building crescent-shaped stone complexes, each comprising four to five residential suites abutting subterranean kivas,[20] large enclosed areas set aside for religious observances and ceremonies. These structures have been identified as characteristic of the Early Pueblo People. By 850, the Ancient Pueblo population—also known as the "Anasazi", from a Ute term adopted by the Navajo whose meaning has been variously translated as "ancient ones" or as "enemy ancestors" —had rapidly expanded, with members residing in larger, denser pueblos. There is strong evidence of a canyon-wide turquoise processing and trading industry dating from the 10th century. At this time, the first section of the massive Pueblo Bonito complex was built, beginning with a curved row of 50 rooms near its present north wall