Chaco Canyon

Upon leaving Pagosa Springs, we headed south into New Mexico to visit more ancient Indian sites. Our campsite was at the KOA in Bloomfield, NM.

Just to the west of Bloomfield on Highway 64 we found Salmon Ruins historical site. It was an outlier site for the Chaco Culture just like those at Chimney Rock.
The interesting part of the Salmon ruins is that it was protected by the Salmon family who homesteaded the land and no one was allowed to touch the site until the mid 1970's. This allowed for a serious excavation of the site which proved to be very full of artifacts. They have a wonderful display at the site.

We decided to head south to explore Chaco Canyon. The canyon is located about 21 miles west of the highway and the last 16 miles is gravel road. The road was completely washboard the entire drive. As we were in our new Tahoe that only had 2,000 miles on it we took it very slow along that stretch and it shook the car tremendously causing us some concern. We talked about that with the people at the Ranger Station and they said that you need to go fast so the car hits only the tops of the bumps. So when we left we went 50 mph instead of 6 mph on the way in and it worked!

Chaco Canyon was the administrative, trading, and ceremonial center for the native indians until the 1200's with most of the building taking place from around 800 AD until 1100 AD.

Chaco Canyon is a wealth of ancient ruins and pictographs. There are many sites thoughout the canyon and it is overwhelming to attempt to really do it in one day!

We took our lunch with us and were glad to have it as there is no place to obtain a meal in the canyon.

All of the photos here were taken in the canyon and it is just a small sample of the sites we saw during our visit. I have pondered what to write about the ruins and decided that it would be more prudent if you as reader would Google the Chaco Canyon and read about it from more professional writers. I can only give our reactions to the experience here and I must tell you that we will go back in the near future and spend even more time! They have a campground there but it is dry camping only without hookups.

We walked the sites and read the information provided and found them to be quite helpful. The Park service has done a good job here at the canyon.

The most interesting nugget of information that we gleaned out of our reading and listening to the tour guides at the ruins, was that the many rooms surrounding the Kivas were never lived in! The entire sites were used for assemblies and ceremonies.

It seems that the clans would travel to Chaco Canyon in order to associate with others of their clan and to participate in their ceremonies. They traveled great distances as we have noted at Chimney Rock in Colorado. They did not use beasts of burden or the wheel, so they only brought with them what they could carry on their journey.

There was a group of permanent residents in the canyon who were responsible for the maintenance of the buildings and to raise food for themselves and their visitors as the travelers could not carry enough food to last for the trip in, the stay, and also the trip back.

From what we learned we have made some suppositions. The main one is that since the Kivas were there for each clan, (Later to become our modern Navajo, Zuni, and other Puebloan peoples), they had to have someplace to store the clans wealth such as the clans pottery, ceremonial items, etc. and the rooms were dedicated to this. ( None of the reading or the guides offered this, we just have concluded it from what we observed and read.)

Thre is a lot of unknowns about these ruins as there was no written lanquage left to help us. We have to rely on oral histoy from modern indians and what we glean from the ruins. It is very interesting and informative.