Cortez, CO – Canyons of the Ancients National Monument is a national monument protecting an archaeologically-significant landscape located in the southwestern region of Colorado. The monument’s 176,056 acres are managed by the Bureau of Land Management, as directed in the Presidential proclamation which created the site on June 9, 2000. Canyons of the Ancients encompasses and surrounds three of the four separate sections of Hovenweep National Monument, which is administered by the National Park Service. The monument was proclaimed in order to preserve the largest concentration of archaeological sites in the United States, primarily Ancestral Puebloan ruins. The monument’s northern and eastern boundaries are canyons. Its western boundary is the Colorado-Utah state border. Lands south are bordered by the Ute Mountain Reservation and McElmo Creek.
Canyons of the Ancients is managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
Ruins along the Sand Canyon Trail in Canyon of the Ancients
The Anasazi Heritage Center is also the visitor center for the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument and is located near Dolores, Colorado. The Anasazi Heritage Center includes artifacts from the monument, a museum with interactive exhibits, a library and a theater. Information is available there regarding the Ancient Puebloan culture, Trail of the Ancients Byway and the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. It’s a great place to stop in before your visit to the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument and we’ve written a separate post about the Anasazi Heritage Center.
Anasazi Heritage Center is located near Dolores, Colorado
As of 2005, at least 6,000 distinct structures have been identified in the monument, and the density of archeological remains is the highest of any region in the United States. The vast majority of stone structures in the national monument are from the Ancient Puebloans era. More than 20,000 sites have been identified, in some places more than 100 sites per square mile. After building basic pit style structures at first, the Puebloans later built villages with cliff dwellings. Archaeological ruins also include Sweat lodges, kivas, shrines and petroglyphs. Reservoirs with stone and earthen dams, including spillways and also numerous check dams, built in case of flash floods. Stone towers which may have been lookout or sentry posts, are found scattered throughout the monument.
Sand Canyon
Notable sites in Canyons of the Ancients include:
Lowry Pueblo National Historic Landmark: consists of 8 kivas, a great (community) kiva and 40 rooms built as high as three stories. The underground great kiva was built about 1103 AD and had murals painted over about 5 layers of plaster. About 1110 AD, another kiva was built on top of the original kiva. Based upon the size of the kiva it’s thought that the Lowry Pueblo may have been a local center for religious gatherings and celebration.
Painted Hand Pueblo: a backcountry site that consists of non-excavated ruins built upon boulders along a cliff-face and a standing tower. The pueblo received its name from a boulder with pictographs of hands.
Sand Canyon Pueblo: one of the largest pueblos of the 13th century, Sand Canyon Pueblo, built between 1250 and 1280, contains at least 20 multi-family room blocks with 420 rooms, 90 kivas, and 14 towers. A spring runs through the center of the walled site that held up to 725 people. Construction was exacting, with care taken to shape stone, and some double and triple walls for stability. Families lived in clusters of rooms that included living, storage and work rooms and had their own family kivas. The community shared roofed plazas, great kivas and towers often connected to kivas. By 1280, new construction had stopped and people began migrating out of the pueblo; By 1290, the pueblo was abandoned after a massacre of 41 women, men and children at the pueblo, as were other Colorado pueblo sites, never to be inhabited again by puebloan people.
Slick rock and Sleeping Ute Mountain
We spent a day hiking the Sand Canyon Trail which Mike wrote about in his post about our Favorite hikes of the Four Corners region. We spotted numerous ruins along the Sand Canyon Trail. We could have spent several more days hiking at the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument.
Another ruin along our trail
Rock formations along Sand Canyon Trail
We visited here while staying at the Sundance RV Park in Cortez, Colorado. We also visited other areas with ruins and artifacts in the region including Mesa Verde National Park, Yucca House National Monument, and Hovenweep National Monument.
