Cannonball Mesa Trail

Cannonball Mesa is a narrow strip of land that divides Yellow Jacket Canyon to the north and McElmo Canyon to the south along the south edge of Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in southwest Colorado.  The trail is a 4WD two track road that runs for 3.5 miles and offers good views into both canyons.
The Trail Head area is 20.4 miles west of Cortez, CO along County Road G, then 1.5 miles north along a rough BLM road to a junction marked with a Park Service sign. The first part of the trail climbs slightly and then levels out on the mesa top.

The terrain is dry with scattered Pinon Pines and Utah Junipers, with areas of sage brush, greasewood, Mormon Tea, grasses, and Prickly Pear Cactus. A few cattle graze in this elevated area and there are several primitive campsites.

About 2 miles along the route is the large Cannonball Mesa Ancestral Pueblo Ruins site. This site sits at the head of a small side canyon on the Yellow Jacket side. To the south side there are the remains of a tower and the outlines of some room blocks. The large size of the overall site is a little startling.

The largest structure appears to be rectangular and sits in the middle of the site. The remaining walls seem to be very tall.

There is another tower at the back, away from the canyon rim, and another past the large rectangular building.

The site appears to spill over the rim and down the slope with some additional structures down below. The area below a spill over point is very dense with vegetation, including several trees, and appears to have a year round spring.

It is possible to descend below the rim and view these structures from a different angle. There is something of a trail down below, but in spots the vegetation is too overgrown to penetrate or see much. I checked the vertical sandstone walls that were easy to view for petroglyphs, but didn’t find any.

The trail continues for another 1.5 miles or so past the ruins site and the two canyons get closer together so that it is possible to see into both canyons at once. To the south, some of the bright green irrigated hayfields in McElmo Canyon along Road G are visible.

To the north, the meandering stream and riparian habitat stand out, There appears to be some vague roads running up Yellow Jacket Canyon. It took me about 1:00 hour of hiking to arrive at the ruins site, where I spent an hour. The additional length of the route took another 0:35 minutes of easy walking. My total hike here was 4:00 hours.

Upper Yellow Jacket Canyon Exploring

Upper Yellow Jacket Canyon is in the northern and eastern part of Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in southwest Colorado. There are only a few established trails in the Monument, an area rich in Ancestral Pueblo ruins sites.

I turned west on County Road X, 1 mile south of Yellow Jacket CO and then turned south on Road 19. About 100 yards south of the junction of county roads W and 19 a spur road leads west for a short distance past some hay barns. There is some room to park along the road and slip through a fence right on the north edge of the canyon head.

I might have briefly crossed over some private land. I talked to someone briefly but they only spoke Spanish. I pointed and said “Canyon” and he seemed to understand and said ok. This area is in the vicinity of the community named Yellow Jacket, north and west of Cortez along highway 491. There is a large Yellow Jacket pueblo site nearby that is located on private land.

I worked west along the canyon rim, sometimes a little below the rim, for about 0.75 miles and then came to another arm of the canyon head. There is a circular farm pond here between the forest edge and the cultivated fields.

Near the pond, there appeared to be a vague ATV trail leading to the southwest toward a rocky point. The ATV trail passes through a fence and continues. The site I found was on the tip of this rocky elevated point. This site has great views in all directions. There are some rubble piles on the top and down on the east side. The view to the east is back toward the point where I started.

There are some circular depressions on the east side where some wall sections of probably kivas are visible. To the north, Sleeping Ute Mountain is visible. The rubble piles continue down the slope and are somewhat overgrown with sage brush.

From the elevated point there is a good view further north to two more branches of the canyon head. There is another rocky point between the two branches that looks interesting but also looks harder to get to from where I started.

I explored along the east side of that area but couldn’t see anything definite. It took me about 2:00 hours of looking before I came across this site, and 0:40 minutes to return to my start point, for a total hike of 2:50 hours on a 70 F. day in April.

McLean Basin Below Pedro Point

McLean Basin is a canyon area in Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in southwest Colorado. It is  in the vicinity of the Painted Hand Pueblo site, but located on the west side of paved County Road 10.

It is of interest as there are Ancestral Pueblo ruins tower structures known as the McLean Basin Towers. The first challenge is to find a route to hike down into the canyon basin, and the second is to find the towers.

Canyons of the Ancients is a find it on your own National Monument and there are very few official trails and limited information on where the interesting sites to hike to are located. I started my exploring at Pedro Point, where there is a good but unpublicized ruins site. This site is along the hike I call the McLean Basin South Rim Trail.

Scanning with binoculars from the canyon rim I couldn't pick out any of the elusive towers. There isn't a trail descending into McLean Basin here, but there is a drainage flowing away from the Pedro Point site that can be followed and allows a route through a steep sandstone cliff that is part of the way down the slope. The route isn't easy but is feasible.


On the flat area just below the steep cliffs, I noticed a small ruins site a little to the east of the drainage. This is still only about half the way down into the basin. This site is mostly circular and has some dry wall sections still standing, with the rest as rubble piles .

It seemed to be isolated, I didn't notice any other structures in the vicinity. There might be a grain grinding spot nearby. From here, the hiking is probably easier away from the small drainage. The slope is walkable and there are cow trails to follow down to the bottoms area where there is a flowing stream.

I crossed the small stream and made my way past a small group of cows to a road on the north side of the basin. In the center of the basin below Pedro Point there is a large hill. The road appears to be easily driveable for those who want to drive to this remote area. Scanning ahead, a rocky elevated point appeared to have some sort of organized rock pile on the top.

Climbing up to the top of this rocky point, this site looks like it could have been a large circular kiva and tower combination. It is positioned with a good view over the sage brush basin floor and the winding stream. Sage brush is supposed to indicate good soil for farming and the stream is a source of water.

Scanning around from this elevated position, it looked like there was a site on the central hill that I had just walked past. There wasn't anything visible from the steep east side where I had hiked. I didn't see anything further to the west that was close, so I retraced back along the road and climbed the hill from the easier sloping west side.This hill top site had the remains of a large circular structure with two standing piles. I had the feeling that recent visitors may have contributed to these piles, but the overall site seems genuine.

These rock piles are high enough to be seen from a distance and at least provide a clue that something is here. In this part of the McLean Basin, the findable sites are located on the high and rocky locations with good views.

I spent 4:30 hours on this hike but only covered about three miles. Most of the hike is picking a route up and down rocky slopes and I spent a lot of time scanning and viewing the sites. I didn't find the elusive McLean Basin towers this time.

Horseshoe Ruins Trail at Hovenweep

The Horseshoe Ruins Trail in Hovenweep National Monument along the south Utah and Colorado border is the first part of a 1.0 mile round trip to two ruins groups, the Horseshoe Group and the Hackberry Group.


The Horseshoe Ruins Trail Head is about five miles north of the Hovenweep Park Headquarters along paved Road 10, then east down a primitive dirt road.

Tower Point Ruin is the first structure along the trail and is built in a spot that gives a good view down Horseshoe Canyon. This structure gives the appearance of having been built for defense, but no one knows.

Back at the canyon head is Horseshoe House. The arrangement of four structures is apparently in a horseshoe shape, although it is hard to see that from the outside.

Horseshoe Ruins seems to have small peep holes rather than windows. At the Hovenweep Castle site in Little Ruin Canyon the peepholes are thought to have something to do with sky observations. The masonry here is thought to have been very precise.

There is a small natural bridge just on the back side of the Horseshoe structure, with more rubble pile structures near the bridge. The habitat here is Pinon Pine and Utah Juniper forest with sagebrush, Mormon Tea, and Prickly Pear Cactus.

Hovenweep is now surrounded by Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, preserving a larger area and many small Ancestral Pueblo Ruins sites.

Below the rim of the main Horseshoe structure is an alcove with another large structure. This isn't visible from the Tower Point structure. It is hard to get a good view of this lower structure.

Another 0.2 miles further past Horseshoe is the Hackberry Group of ruins. This group is thought to have supported a large population due to the more reliable water supply. The Hovenweep area is very hot in summer with spring and fall being the best times to visit.

Ruin Canyon East Rim-South

Ruin Canyon is one of the southwest Colorado canyon areas preserved in Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. This area is part of the Cross Canyon Wilderness Study Area. There aren't many developed trails in this National Monument and it is left to the visitor to explore on their own. There are often old roads or cow trails that are helpful.

I found a place to park off of paved Road 10 about 5.5 miles north of the marked road leading to Painted Hand Pueblo, and next to some old green tanks. Finding a reasonable place to park is one of the challenges in exporing these canyons. This area is north of the Hovenweep Visitor Center and also north of the Hovenweep outlying sites. I approached from the area near Lowry Ruins in the north part of the Monument.

In this area the paved road is very close to the canyon rim. I walked south along the canyon rim for about 0.25 miles, scanning the scenic area below for signs of any Ancestral Pueblo ruins sites. The view here is to the south toward McLean Basin.

From the distance, one of the large boulders on the west side of the canyon appeared to have some rubble scattered on the top. It wasn't clear that this was a ruins site, but it gave me a destination to hike towards and explore.

There were some steep ledges in the area where I went down, but with gaps that allow a descent. The cows that graze here seem to be good route finders, and I was able to follow the cow trails to the canyon bottom, where, in the spring, a small amount of water was flowing.

There wasn't much still standing at this site, but it was worth the effort to get there. It was something of a castle rock site with rubble piles around the base and a few fragments of wall sections wedged between gaps in the rocks.

It isn't unusual in this area to find ruins built on the tops of large boulders, though usually not much is left on the top. I scanned the surrounding area but didn't see any more obvious structures, though I tripped over a hidden one the way up.

My hike back to the top was more back to the north near where I parked and was less rocky going up. The canyon rim area here is very broken and has many nooks and joints that looked like good potential ruins site locations but I didn't see anything definite. My hike in this area was about 2:20 hours.

On a later hike in the fall, I started at the same point and continued south down Ruin Canyon toward the junction with Cross Canyon. The west side of the canyon has a shelf area between the creek bottom and the cliffs on the west side. I went down canyon for about 2:00 hours, maybe 2.5 miles, to a point near a side canyon junction, well before Cross Canyon. On the down canyon hike I stayed closer to the cliffs and returned up canyon closer to the creek.

There aren't any trails in this area, but the walking through the Pinon Pine and Utah Juniper forest was reasonable. The going was slower than with a good trail. There were some large boulder areas near the cliffs where I noticed some pot shards and a small rock wall, but it didn't amount to very much. In the area where I turned around it looked like there was an old road approaching from the south that led to a drill hole with a pipe still sticking up. A short distance north of the drill hole I noticed a circular rock structure overlooking the creek, hidden in the trees.

I was lucky to see this small site as it isn't visible unless you walk right past it. The Ruin Canyon in this area seems to lack sagebrush fields that would have been farming fields and, in the fall, there wasn't much water flowing at the canyon bottom. I spent 4:30 hours on the second hike and revisited the two sites I had spotted earlier, plus the two more small ones.