Chaco Culture National Historic Park Vacations, Chaco Culture National Historic Park Vacation Reviews, Tourism Guide

Chaco Culture National Historic Park Vacation Guide

Situated in northwest New Mexico, surrounded by the Navajo and near the Hopi and Zuni Reservations, Chaco Culture National Historic Park is administered by the National Park Service. Sometime between AD 850 and 1250, Chaco Canyon was a major hub of the ancestral Puebloan (Anazazi) culture. Many clans helped to create this ceremonial, economical and political center. Never before or since, has architecture, social organization or community life like this been known in this area. Chaco's distictive architecture is shown in its impressive public and ceremonial buildings. They developed a masonry technique that enabled them to build structures up to four stories high. Several of these complexes contain hundreds of rooms and dozens of kivas. The Chacoan people used geometry, astronomical alignment, landscaping and engineering to create a spectacular urban center of public architecture. Chaco was the trade center for over a hundred communities connected by a 400 mile system of roadways and steps, cut into the canyon walls. Much of what is known of these people has been learned from the 1,200 or so ruins found inside the park. Petroglyphs, black and white pottery, turquoise jewelry, the roads and the dwellings themselves reveal little of its people. Though seemingly inhospitable, an estimated 4,000 - 5,000 lived in Chaco at one point. They farmed the lowlands and traded as far as Mexico. The site is still part of the sacred homeland for the peoples of the Hopi, Navajo and Pueblo.