Ancient Skywatchers at Hovenweep Castle

The Little Ruins Canyon Trail is a 2.0 mile loop at Hovenweep National Monument on the south Utah-Colorado border. The trail visits at least 10 ruins structures built by Ancestral Pueblo People who lived here until about 1300 AD.

The trail begins a short distance from the visitor center and follows around the rim of this east and west lying canyon, dipping into and crossing the canyon at the east end. The Hovenweep Castle is near the west end at the southern most of the two canyon heads.

The trail guide says there are two D shaped towers. The terrain on the canyon rim is very dry, with sage brush and a few scattered Utah Juniper trees. The stonework at the Hovenweep sites is considered to be very good and to show a variety of styles and shapes.

These structures have some T-shaped doorways, a feature seen on many of the Ancestral Pueblo sites all around the region, including at Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon. Some of the smaller holes are thought to be related to observations of the sun.

The port holes that are thought to be related to sky watching are on the first story of the west side. The port hole to the right of the west side is thought to be related to the setting sun summer solstice and the port hole around the corner to the right relates to the winter solstice.

The interior of Hovenweep Castle is closed, so visitors can’t observe the beams of light themselves.

Many of the Hovenweep structures have portholes so the solar observations seem like they must have been noticed after construction.

Unit Type House on the north rim also has some portholes on the east side that catch the rising sun rays on the solstices.

Below the canyon rim where Hovenweep Castle sits is the Square Tower. The area at the canyon bottom is greener due to the seep springs and has plants, like the large Hackberry trees, that are not growing on the canyon rim.

The Square Tower shows a slight spiral, twisting slightly in a clockwise direction. The trail guide indicates that the spiral shape was for added strength or aesthetics. The guide also says there is a circular kiva associated with the tower. The location of the Square Tower near the spring may be to protect it. This practice of protecting the water resources appears to be common at the Hovenweep sites.

Turkeys of the Ancients

One of the minor displays at the Anasazi Heritage Center in Dolores, Colorado discusses the importance of turkeys to the Ancestral Pueblo people that lived in the Four Corners region.

Turkeys, along with dogs, were the only domesticated animals kept. It is thought that domestication began around 800 AD, though wild turkeys had been captured and used before. Turkeys were important as a source of food, feathers, and a source of bone tools.

The wild turkey that currently lives in the region is called Merriam’s Wild Turkey and is a sub species of the well known Wild Turkey. Male turkeys can reach a length of 48 inches and weigh 18 pounds. The typical habitat is the Ponderosa Pine forests that are mixed with Aspens down to the Gambel Oak forest that blends into the Pinon Pine and Junipers.

They naturally eat pine nuts, acorns, green vegetation, and insects, particularly grasshoppers in summer. The interpretive information at the parks often says that the Ancestral Puebloans fed the turkeys with corn until they started to run out of corn and then the turkey remains disappeared from the trash mounds.

The drawer display has several examples of bone tools made from the turkey skeleton.

Turkeys appear occasionally in the rock art of the region. This Barrier style image was part of the Sacred Images exhibit at the Anasazi Heritage Center in 2011. The text with this picture only says it is from the western Colorado River drainage. It isn't one of the images on the Horseshoe Canyon Trail in Canyonlands.

There are turkey track petroglyphs in the Canyons of the Ancients. This image is near the Big Spring Pueblo and Hovenweep Canyon.

Turkey track images appear also on pottery.

The turkey feathers were used to make robes, blankets and socks. There is a replica of a turkey feather robe at the Anasazi Heritage Center.

The feathers were split down the middle and wrapped around yucca cords. By 1100 AD feather wrapping was more common than fur, perhaps because the materials were easier to obtain.

On Wetherill Mesa at Mesa Verde, the Two Raven House on the Badger House Trail features evidence for a fence that partially encloses the plaza. One of the possible explanations for the fence was to keep turkeys in or out of the village. One of the ruins sites along the Kane Gulch Trail in Grand Gulch, Utah is known as the Turkey Pen Ruin.

Ancient Skywatchers Exhibit at the Anasazi Heritage Center

Beginning November 23, 2012 and extending to April 2013, the Anasazi Heritage Center in Dolores, Colorado is hosting the Ancient Skywatchers of the Southwest Exhibit.

Images by photographer John Ninnemann show how the Ancestral Pueblo people that lived in the Four Corners area prior to the arrival of European American settlers had an advanced understanding of the paths of the sun and moon. This knowledge was important in the timing of crop planting and ceremonial events.

Along the first wall when entering the exhibit there are displays on the moon and the sun and images from Mesa Verde National Park. The Mesa Verde images emphasize a particular view point marked by a small pecked basin that is south of the famous Cliff Palace. From this pecked basin the sun sets directly over the Sun Temple on the Winter Solstice. I don’t think the pecked basin is pointed out on the normal Cliff Palace tours, or maybe it off the trail and not visible.

The Sun Temple is easy to visit site on the self guiding Mesa Top Tour at Mesa Verde. The trail guide points out that there is a natural rock basin in the southwestern corner that Jesse Walter Fewkes speculated was a solar marker. No evidence of roof material was found at the Sun Temple, leading the conclusion that the structure was unfinished.

A four story tower on the south end of the Cliff Palace alcove has some artwork visible on the interior. If you aren't in a hurry at the end of the tour, you can usually wait in line to lean into a small doorway and look up.

The older trail guides for Cliff Palace describe these images as decorative but the Skywatchers Exhibit suggests that these may represent a record of observations of the moon. The exhibit has a close up picture of the artwork that gives a better view than a visitor can see on the tour.

The guided tours of Cliff Palace are usually offered from April to November. In the winter season, there are good view points from the Sun Temple and the Cliff Palace trailhead.

The second long wall has displays of Hovenweep National Monument and Yucca House National Monument. The Holly Ruins Group is one of the outlying Hovenweep sites and is located about 4 miles north of the Hovenweep Visitor Center. At the south end of the Holly Group there is an overlook of a petroglyph panel that is thought to mark the summer solstice.

On the summer solstice there is a dagger of sunlight that crosses a set of concentric circles. The exhibit has a good close up picture of the sun dagger crossing the concentric circles. The Holly Group is somewhat remote but is easy to visit.

Yucca House National Monument is a large unexcavated ruins site located south of Cortez, CO between Mesa Verde and Sleeping Ute Mountain. The sun at winter solstice appears to set on top of the toe of the Sleeping Ute when viewed from the upper Great House. The Yucca House site is easy to visit but doesn't get much publicity.

Pictures of Chaco Canyon in northwest New Mexico take up the third wall of the exhibit. Chaco Canyon has many examples of knowledge of the heavens. On the Penasco Blanco Trail there are pictographs that are thought to depict the Supernova of 1054 AD. There are several nearly exact north and south alignments at Pueblo Bonito and Casa Rinconda.

Fajada Butte is probably the most prominent archaeoastronomy site in the Chaco Canyon Park. Visitors can only view it from the distance but interpretive signs point out that there are three boulder slabs directing sunlight onto petroglyphs that mark the solstices and equinoxes. There are good elevated views of Fajada Butte from the Chaco Canyon Overlook Trail at the Gallo Campground.

The Anasazi Heritage Center has more information than is obvious at first glance. In the main gallery there is a table with four computers. One of the computers focuses on Chaco Canyon and the greater Chaco community. Part of the computer display discusses the Fajada Butte solar site and includes more Skywatcher pictures and discussion.

The fourth outer wall of the Exhibit features Skywatcher sites from the Cedar Mesa and Comb Ridge area of southeast Utah. The set of four images shows the sun rising close to the summer solstice along the cliffs north of the San Juan River. Other images show some of the many alcove sites in the Cedar Mesa area. The Cedar Mesa area has many interesting trails but they are mostly unpublicized.

The center of the exhibit floor features Chimney Rock, the Yellow Jacket Pueblo, and the V-Bar Ranch. Chimney Rock between Bayfield and Pagosa Springs, CO has been elevated to National Monument Status in 2012. There are two short trails at Chimney Rock with the Great House Pueblo Trail appearing to be closely associated with the Lunar Standstill. The largest north and south difference between where the moon rises during its monthly cycle occurs on a regular 18.61 year cycle that is known as the Lunar Standstill.

There is a large Great House ruins site with a good view of the Chimney Rocks. This is an unusual high elevation location for a large structure and there doesn't seem to be any reason for it to be here except for these Skywatcher observations. This is an easy site to visit.

Yellow Jacket Pueblo is the largest known ruins site in the Mesa Verde region. Tours of the Yellow Jacket Pueblo are offered usually three times per year during the summer months. The tours are publicized and arranged at the Anasazi Heritage Center.

One of the interesting features of the tour is the solar monument that appears to line up with the Lizard Head formation in the San Miguel Mountains that are near Telluride.

The V-Bar V Ranch is near Sedona, Arizona has a petroglyph site with 1032 glyphs on 13 panels. It is believed that part of the petroglyph site is a solar calendar that would have aided the agricultural activity in the area.

Not included in the exhibit, but part of greater Mesa Verde is the Mancos Canyon area of Ute Mountain Tribal Park. There is a special Sun Calendar Tour, usually offered in late May that visits several monuments and petroglyph panels that are also thought to be related to the Ancient Skywatchers.

Bridge Canyon South of Holly Ruins

The Holly Ruins Group is one of the outlying sites of Hovenweep National Monument in southwest Colorado. The rough road leading to the Holly and Horseshoe Units appears on the Canyons of the Ancients map as Road 4721 and is about 5 miles north of the Hovenweep Visitor Center along County Road 10.

A short distance south of the Holly Ruins there is a junction with BLM Road 4723 turning south and Road 4721 continues southeast. Road 4723 is marked as closed to motorized vehicles. I started near this junction and followed Road 4723 along the mesa top area between Bridge Canyon on the east and Keeley Canyon on the west.

The road follows closely along the west rim of Bridge Canyon. After about 0:20 minutes of hiking I saw a small rubble pile near the rim. This site doesn't look like much but there are some pottery shards here so it is probably something.

 The mesa top area between Bridge and Keeley Canyons is a broad rolling field of sage brush. One can imagine that this was once a broad farming area used by the residents of the nearby Holly and Hackberry sites. At a few points along the trail the Headquarters for Hovenweep Monument is visible, with even the Hovenweep Castle visible despite being about 3 miles away.

About 2 miles south there was a rocky boulder area that looked like a good location but I didn't see any ruins structures there. There were good views down Bridge Canyon toward the Cannonball Mesa Area.

The road appears to continue for at least another mile. I turned around here after 1:30 hours. There is good visibility here and I didn't see any other ruins sites in the distance. From here I walked back northwest through the sagebrush fields toward a ruins site that was closer to the Keeley Canyon side of the mesa top.

From my turnaround point it took 0:45 minutes to arrive at this site. There appears to be a circular rubble pile around a depression with an odd stack of neatly piled stones. Some of the towers of the Holly site are visible across Keeley Canyon.

The stack of building stones acts a marker that makes this site more visible from a distance. I have noticed other tall rock cairns in this area but they didn't seem to be associated with ruins sites.

From this ruins site it took 0:30 minutes to return to the junction of roads 4721 and 4723. Along the way, there were across the canyon views of the Holly Ruins towers. My total hike took 3:00 hours for about 4 miles. I hiked on a 66 F degree early November day and carried 3 liters of water.

Hovenweep Canyon NW of Painted Hand Pueblo

The trailhead for the 0.75 mile Painted Hand Pueblo Trail is about one mile down the marked bumpy dirt road that is about 10 miles north of the Visitor Center for Hovenweep National Monument along County Road 10.

This area is west of Pleasant View in southwest Colorado and close to the border with Utah.  The trail to the outlying Cutthroat Castle Pueblo is about 0.5 miles further along the same road.

The first segment of trail to the Painted Hand Pueblo is along the west rim of Hovenweep Canyon. On this hike, I continued much further along the rim well past the Painted Hand site. About 0:15 minutes further there is a boulder based ruins site visible below the rim.

On the Hovenweep Canyon floor there is a trail that appears on the Canyons of the Ancients map as Road 4531f and it is open for hikers, horses, and bicycles. The two side canyons on the east side in this area both have medium sized Ancestral Pueblo ruins sites.

After about 1.5 miles, there is a side canyon where I had to descend to the floor to avoid private property that is close to the canyon rim. In this area, the canyon floor has some charred trees but is otherwise grassy. Near the head of this side canyon I noticed a large white sandstone rock outcrop that looked like it had some alcoves and I climbed back up.

This rock outcrop looked like a good location and I saw some pottery shards here, but I didn't see anything that looked like a ruins structure.

Continuing on for about 1.5 more miles I arrived at a very scenic lookout point. A rock positioned on the point was directed at the LaPlata Mountains, visible faintly in the distance to the east. This is probably a rarely visited point and this rock has probably been in this position for a long time. It certainly looks like it could be a solar observation point.

From this same view point, it looks like there is an isolated tower further north on the canyon floor.

Looking to the west up a side canyon, there is an obvious large ruins site, overgrown with sagebrush about 0.5 miles away. The cottonwood trees indicate there is water in the side canyon.

As I was resting and enjoying the view, I was surprised by two other local hikers accompanied by seven friendly dogs. These hikers knew that below this point, there were some turkey track petroglyphs and other markings that resemble the rock sharpening grooves that are often seen near ruins sites.

From the lookout point it took about 0:20 minutes to reach the large rubble pile ruins site. The site is at the head of the side canyon and is divided by one of the arms at the head into two parts. The rubble piles are very large but I didn't see that much was still intact.

The hikers that I met said that this is known as the Big Spring Pueblo site. I saw a surveying cap marker that had the number 5MT 7088.

From the ruins site I followed a cow trail down the side canyon, through a sagebrush field, to the main Hovenweep Canyon. This cow trail eventually connected with the main 4531f trail before it turns east toward Negro Canyon. So it is possible to walk on trails nearly all the way to the Big Spring site. The trail junction is faint but visible if you are looking carefully for it.

My return hike took 2:00 hours. I had to find a random place to climb back to the west rim before arriving at the Painted Hand site. The other option would be to continue the easy walking on 4531f to the Cutthroat Castle Trailhead. My total hike took 5:00 hours for about 7 miles. I hiked on a 60 F degree mid October day and carried 3 liters of water.