Chaco Canyon

This is the notch that contains the staircase to Pueblo Alto. Pueblo Alto is one of the Chacoan great houses. Great houses are very large town/apartment villages that date to 1000-1300 AD. They dot the four corners area of the Southwest US. Alto was one of the earliest of the Chaco Canyon great houses. Chaco Canyon was the great blossoming of the pueblo people in the 11th and 12th centuries. What is called downtown Chaco is on the floor of Chaco Canyon and on the cliff edges around the canyon. Some of the ruins are 5 stories high and had 800 rooms. Why these huge buildings exist in the middle of the desert is unknown. It is utterly astonishing and has the feel of a sacred place.

Pueblo Alto sits on the "Great North Road" that links Chaco to the outlying great houses all over the Southwest. Pueblo Alto sits on the cliff on the north side of the canyon about 200 feet above the canyon floor. There is a stairway that climbs from the canyon floor, just in back of Kin Kletso. The stairway is in a narrow cleft of rock about a meter wide. It has steps cut into the rock by the ancestral pueblo people who lived here.

I first came to New Mexico as a young archaeologist 36 years ago to work at Salmon Ruins, a Chacoan great house outlier. We were taken almost immediately to Chaco and I fell in love and awe of the place.