Canyons of the Ancients National Monument

Today we looked east from Blanding, Utah toward two national monuments that have ancient pueblo ruins in common:  Canyons of the Ancients, near Dolores, Colorado, and Hovenweep, just east of the Utah-Colorado border.

We started with Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, which protects an archaeologically-significant landscape located in southwestern Colorado, was created in the year 2000. The monument's 276 square miles are managed by BLM. The monument was proclaimed in order to preserve the largest concentration of archaeological sites in the United States, primarily Ancestral Puebloan ruins. As of 2005, over 6,000 individual archeological sites had been identified within the monument.

We started at the Visitor Center near Dolores, which is also known as the Anasazi Cultural Heritage Center, and, after watching the video introduction and touring the museum, walked around the ruins of what is known as the Escalante Pueblo located at the center:

The ruins include a large internal kiva, which we had only previously seen in the La Bonita ruins at Chaco Canyon National Monument:

Looking out from the ruins, we could understand why Ancestral Puebloans had located their home here.  Below was the beautiful, life-giving Dolores River, and, to the north, a view of the snow-capped La Plata Mountains which had just received their dressing of snow in a recent storm:

From the ruins, we could also see Sleeping Ute Mountain, which has its own story in the legend of local native peoples:

In the very old days, the Sleeping Ute Mountain was a Great Warrior God. He came to help fight against the Evil Ones who were causing much trouble.  A tremendous battle between the Great Warrior God and the Evil Ones followed. As they stepped hard upon the earth and braced themselves to fight, their feet pushed the land into mountains and valleys. This is how the country of this region came to be as it is today.  The Great Warrior God was hurt, so he lay down to rest and fell into a deep sleep. The blood from his wound turned into living water for all creatures to drink.  When the fog or clouds settle over the Sleeping Warrior God, it is a sign that he is changing his blankets for the four seasons.  When the Indians see the light green blanket over their "God", they know it is spring. The dark green blanket is summer, the yellow and red one is fall, and the white one is winter.  The Indians believe that when the clouds gather on the highest peak, the Warrior God is pleased with his people and is letting rain clouds slip from his pockets. They also believe that the Great Warrior God will rise again to help them in the fight against their enemies.

With the ruins and legends of the Dolores area in mind, we drove on to one of the most well-known pueblo ruins in Canyons of the Ancients - Lowry Pueblo.  It has been partially reconstructed and is protected by a steel roof structure: 

Portions of the ruins are accessible to tourists, so we walked through them to try to gain a feeling for what it was like for the ancient ones to live in these structures.  Below, David peers through a window of one of the pueblo rooms:

The Lowry Pueblo boasts one of the largest great kivas discovered to date.  It is large enough to permit it to delineate areas for the "winter people" and "summer people" in the native tribe - those who supervise the activities in wintertime and those who supervise summertime activities:

The foundations in the kiva for the winter and summer people have unique designs.  This one is reminiscent of Kokopeli:

From Lowry Pueblo, we moved on to Painted Hand Pueblo, which was a little more challenging to reach because it required us to climb down through slots between rocks from the mesa surface above this cliff dwelling:

The dominant surviving structure of Painted Hand Pueblo is a round tower that dominates the canyon below:

Here is another view of the tower:

This is an even more interesting view of the tower, from below, because it shows the flat rock on which the tower is constructed and reveals that a residence had been constructed in the hollow under the flat rock:

Nearby are a number of petroglyphis and pictographs, many of which, unfortunately, are starting to fade from time and wear.  This one is of a four-legged animal that we could not identify:

Here is another four-legged creature:

Not far from the tower is another residence built with masonry under an overhanging rock.  Kathy explores the residence in the photo below:

Painted Hand Pueblo was a very satisfying ruin to explore because it was so accessible, because it was quite different in composition from other pueblo ruins we've seen - in that it included a tower - and because it was a cliff dwelling rather than a pueblo constructed on the top of a hill or other rise of ground.

We drove west toward Hovenweep National Monument filled with excitement about what Hovenweep would show us that would be even more dramatic than the ruins we saw in Canyons of the Ancients.