Squaw Point near Lower Cross Canyon

The Cross Canyon access road is 2.7 miles northeast of the turnoff to the headquarters of Hovenweep National Monument along paved County Road 10, along the Utah and southwest Colorado border. The access road is marked as San Juan County 2031 and turns west descending steeply for 2.3 miles down into Cross Canyon.

At the bottom there is a creek crossing. Just past the creek there is a right turn that enters Cross Canyon and heads toward McLean Basin and the Cross Canyon Wilderness Study Area. The trail I followed is about 1.2 miles up this road on the left. It is clearly visible while descending into the canyon. This rough uphill road connects to other roads on top of Squaw Point. This area is slightly outside the official Canyons of the Ancients, but still BLM managed land.

I’ve started up this trail before but turned back about halfway up due to biting gnats. Continuing to the mesa top, there is a side road that turns south. I followed this route to the end of the trail. After about 1:00 hour of hiking the trail ends and a large boulder based ruins site is visible further south. It took me another 0:20 minutes to arrive at the site. There are two short side canyons between the end of the trail and the ridge location of the boulder ruins.

There is a lot of rubble on the top of the boulder, but only fragments have held together as walls. This site has one of the most dramatic of locations. It is on the point that overlooks the very broad junction of Cross Canyon and Squaw Canyon. The rocky point location is visible from miles around but it is not obviously a ruins site from a long distance view.

Most of the interesting features are along the east side. There are two small sections of wall structures that have been sheltered with some brick fragments visible above.

Further on there is a kiva depression with some wall brickwork visible. There were many pottery shards around the kiva.

The largest and most conspicuous pottery shards were white with black smudges. This style seemed unusual. There were also corrugated and a few painted designs.

Further on there is a large circular rubble pile. The sides of the boulders are tall and very vertical and I didn’t notice any easy way for the residents to climb to the top.

I noticed three petroglyph panels. One of them had some very clear and interesting images. There is a good image of a hunter with a bow and arrow aiming at a mountain sheep.

On the left side of the same panel are two reclining figures, one playing a flute. I can’t tell what the other figure is doing. The pair seems to be enclosed in a frame.

Looking back north along the east rim of Squaw Canyon, I think another boulder based site with wide views is visible two or three miles away. The Squaw Point road leads close to that site. It is interesting that these two sites have a very clear line of sight. My return hike took 1:10 hours and the total hike was 3:15 hours for about 5 miles. I carried and drank 2 liters of water on a sunny 68 F degree mid October day. The sunny mild days of fall are probably the best time of year for hiking in the Canyons of the Ancients.

Hovenweep Canyon near Mockingbird Mesa

The route to Mockingbird Mesa in the Canyons of the Ancients is to follow County Road 12 south from the junction with County Road BB for 7.2 miles and make a left turn at a BLM road junction. This area is west of Pleasant View, in southwest Colorado.

Staying to the right at the Mockingbird junction and right at the next junction for 1.2 miles leads to a south leading dirt road trail that provides an access to the east rim of the upper part of Hovenweep Canyon. There is a carbon dioxide plant visible 0.3 miles past where I started hiking.

The unmarked dirt road trail leads about 2 miles southwest and then is blocked by a gate at private property. Near the end of the road, a carbon dioxide pipeline crosses the road and provides a cleared route down into and across Hovenweep Canyon.

Hiking along the road, I didn’t notice any Ancestral Pueblo ruins sites. Scanning up and down the canyon, I thought I saw a rubble pile and a wall with a doorway about one mile back to the north. I didn’t follow the pipeline down into the canyon, but instead hiked back north and found a gentle slope leading down.

The canyon bottom here is a side canyon to the east of the main Hovenweep Canyon. The Cottonwood trees along the dry wash made me think that there might be a ruins site in this canyon bottom area. Even though there wasn’t any flowing water here, there must be some not far below the surface.

I’m surprised by how often I stumble into ruins sites without any hint that they are here. This large site is completely obscured by thick Pinon and Juniper forest and isn’t visible from more than 50 feet away. This isn’t the site I saw from the canyon rim. The rubble piles at this site are tall and cover a large area but are overgrown and it is hard to view the overall site.

I didn’t see any walls that have held together. The good news is that the site is marked by the Cottonwood trees growing along the small drainage that joins the main drainage from the west. The L shaped pattern of the Cottonwood growth along the watershed is easy to spot from high angle views. I was about 2:00 hours into my hike when I arrived at this hidden site.

I continued north, climbing up a slope to a mesa top area. I didn’t see the ruins sites I was looking for on the way up, but I saw many pieces of pottery. At the rim I scanned around and spotted some rubble. Close to the rim, there is a circle of large stones and below was the wall and doorway that I had spotted from a mile away.

This wall and the circle above are supported on massive slabs of stone that have separated from the main cliffs. From this unusual large stone structure I couldn’t see anything else, but the rubble pile I had spotted from the distance was lower and slightly to the east.

The rubble pile could have been this large boulder based site. There are other small structures around the base of this large boulder.

I was stunned to find that there are two boulder based sites nearly side by side. This must have been an impressive place when these twin structures were standing tall. Both of these boulders have small wall sections still holding together toward the back of each.

Behind the east boulder, there is a wall constructed between two boulders. The upstream side of the wall has filled in with sediment such that you can stand at the level of the top of the wall. I wondered if this was a device to catch water flowing through the site and save it in a cistern.

The pottery shards I saw were mostly corrugated. There were only a few painted visible along with some smooth gray pieces.

For the return hike I walked the short distance west to the east rim of Hovenweep Canyon and followed the northeast leading rim back to the carbon dioxide plant. Close to the plant in a small drainage, I saw what I think is a check dam. I didn’t notice anything near the check dam but I was at the end of my hike. My return hike took 1:00 hour of slow walking.

My total hike took 4:30 hours for about 5 miles. On a late September day I carried and drank 3 liters of water. It was about 65 F degrees at 9:30 AM and 83 F degrees at 2:00 PM.

Cannonball Mesa Cliffs Southwest

The southwest corner of Cannonball Mesa has a rocky point above high cliffs that overlooks the Ismay Pueblo and Petroglyph site. This area is on the southwest side of the Canyons of the Ancients area in southwest Colorado. The access is about 26 miles west of Cortez, CO along County Road G. A short distance east of the point, there is a south turnoff that leads to the Hamilton Mesa area.

On the north side of County Road G, across from the turnoff, there is a short unmarked trail that climbs toward the south side cliffs. On a shelf area below the cliffs, the Ismay ruins site has a boulder based neighbor. This site is visible from the mesa top point, but isn’t visible from the road.

The boulder forms something of a rock shelter with a constructed room in front. There are remains of other rooms around the west side also.

From the backside there views of the wall segments on top of the boulder. The overall site is bigger than it appears at first. More rubble is behind the boulder and there are minor structures spread across the hillside. This terrain and environment here appears to be very dry but it is near the junction of McElmo Creek and Yellowjacket Creek, both with flowing water most of the year. The Cannonball Mesa area has several more ruins sites to search for.

On the east side of the boulder there is a petroglyph panel. I haven’t seen much rock art in the Canyons of the Ancients except here in the Cannonball Mesa area.

Some of the other nearby boulders have minor images also. There is a roadside boulder a short distance west of the trailhead that has easy to view rock art, but it is somewhat vandalized with recent graffiti. Some of the rock faces up above have initials inscriptions with dates from the 1930s.

I spent 1:20 hours visiting this site on an 82 F degree late September afternoon. The hiking distance is very short; most time is spent exploring the area. The Ismay Pueblo and Petroglyph site is just a short distance further west. It is probably possible to continue to the mesa top from this site. From the mesa top view I saw a notch in the cliffs above the ruins that can be hiked, but I thought it would be easier to visit from the road.

Hamilton Mesa Trail

Hamilton Mesa forms the south side of McElmo Canyon in the area where Cannonball Mesa forms the north side. This relatively dry area is the southwest corner of the Canyons of the Ancients in southwest Colorado. The trail is the unmarked BLM road that is a south turn from County Road G, 26 miles west of Cortez, CO. There is a roadside boulder with some petroglyphs about 100 yards west of this turnoff.

The Hamilton Mesa Trail is lightly used as it requires visitors to get across McElmo Creek, which carries irrigation water much of the year. I brought river sandals for the out and back creek crossings. In late September the water was knee deep with enough current that I used a long Tamarisk stick to help with balance and walked carefully. The footing was firm on the mostly rocky bottom. It reminded me of the creek crossings on the popular hikes at Mill Creek in Moab, Utah.

The trail heads south for about 1 mile along the west side of Hamilton Mesa and then turns east and follows the south side. There are large power lines crossing the area near the trail. After about 2 miles, there is a fence with a gate at a large inlet on the south side of the mesa.

The canyon area on the south side is very wide and very dry with only grasses and scattered shrubs growing. I was walking slowly and scanned the cliffs for Ancestral Pueblo ruins sites but didn’t notice anything.

The road continues into the distance along the floor of the mostly featureless canyon. I crossed through the gate and walked up the draw. There appeared to be a place to climb to the mesa top. Once up on top, there is a lot of level area to explore. There are more Juniper trees on top but it is still a dry environment.

The Hamilton Mesa top isn’t very wide and it is easy to walk to the north rim for views across the green irrigated bottom of McElmo Canyon. There is a road on the mesa top that leads to the east. It is probably possible to walk up on the mesa top using the road system rather than climb up like I did.

There are good views in the area where I hiked but I didn’t find any ruins sites. My total hike in the Hamilton Mesa area took 4:30 hours for about 6 miles. The small scale maps for this area at the Anasazi Heritage Center show some archaeology sites for this area and there is lot more area to explore. I carried and drank 3 liters of water on a sunny late September day that was 60 F at 9:45 AM and 82 F at 2:15 PM.

Pedro Point South

The Pedro Point road leads to one of the easiest to find unpublicized Ancestral Pueblo ruins sites in the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in southwest Colorado. The route follows the BLM dirt road marked 4720 west.

This road is a west turn, about 1.4 miles south of the turnoff for the Painted Hand Pueblo along paved County Road 10, and about 8 miles north of the Visitor Center for Hovenweep National Monument.

On this hike I was looking in the area south of the Pedro Point Road about half way to the well known ruins site. I drove the first 0.6 miles to the point where there is a good overlook to the north into the McLean Basin, then starting hiking along the road, but mostly looking at the heads of the large side canyon on the south side of the road.

After about 25 minutes and 0.8 miles, I turned south and followed along the west rim of the long side canyon.

After less than 0:10 minutes of hiking, I noticed a tall rubble pile within about 100 feet of the canyon rim. There is a second smaller rubble pile on the west side.

There isn’t much definition to the rubble pile combination. These two structures seem to be isolated, about 1.5 miles southeast of the large Pedro Point site.

There were many pottery shards associated with this site. I mostly saw plain white pieces and corrugated with a few painted designs.

I continued west through a wide sage brush field without seeing any other sites, then turned north and intersected the Pedro Point Road about 0.8 miles east of the large Pedro Point site. Near where I found the road there is a small rubble pile close to the south side of the road. This site would probably not be noticed if you are driving but hikers should see it.

The return hike to my starting point took 0:40 minutes for about 1.6 miles. My total hike took 1:45 hours for about 4 miles. It was an 80 F degree early September morning. I carried and drank 2 liters of water.

There are viewpoints along the Pedro Point Road into the wide McLean Basin. The elusive McLean Basin Towers are visible with binoculars below some cliffs toward the northeast side of the basin.