Chaco Canyon

Chaco Canyon’s long winters, short growing seasons, and scant rainfall make it an unlikely place for a major cultural center. Yet its great houses were planned from the start and built over decades or centuries with distinctive masonry. They were often oriented to solar, lunar, and cardinal directions, with lines of sight between buildings, astronomical markers, water-control features, and earthen mounds around them. Many researchers think the great houses were not ordinary farming villages but public architecture, used periodically for ceremonies, commerce, and trade when people gathered in the canyon.

During the middle and late 800s, Pueblo Bonito, Una Vida, and Peñasco Blanco were built, followed by Hungo Pavi, Chetro Ketl, Pueblo Alto, and others. By 1050, Chaco’s influence extended across the San Juan Basin. Researchers still debate what held this system together — a trading network for turquoise, macaws, copper bells, and shells; a system for sharing food when harvests failed; or a religious “center place.” Pueblo descendants describe Chaco as a special gathering place where many peoples and clans converged to share ceremonies and knowledge.

In the 1100s and 1200s, construction slowed and Chaco’s role shifted to other centers, including Aztec and Mesa Verde. People migrated to new areas and reorganized their world. Their descendants are the Pueblo peoples of today, many of whom regard Chaco as a sacred stop along their clans’ migration paths.