Going Back One Thousand Years

RVers have the opportunity to experience the ancient Puebloan culture that flourished a thousand years ago in northwest New Mexico by staying in a campground inside Chaco Culture National Historical Park.

At Canyon Overlook Trail above Gallo Campground, you can watch the brilliant desert sunset. Stay until dark and you may hear the distant drumming of the Pueblo ghosts. In the morning, birds welcome the new day as the sun shines on Fajada Butte Solstice Marker, Chaco Canyon’s dominant landmark that is revered by the Pueblo people, and off-limits to visitors.

Gallo Campground sits amid a high desert landscape surrounded by petroglyphs, a cliff dwelling and inscriptions inside Chaco Culture National Historical Park, which preserves one of America’s most significant areas.

Chaco Canyon was a major center of trade and ceremonial life of the ancestral Puebloan culture between 850 and 1250. The inhabitants constructed massive stone buildings, called “great houses,” that contained hundreds of rooms and multiple stories. Roads connected the dozens of houses in the canyon to 150 great houses that were built in outlying areas.

More than 400 miles of prehistoric roadway have been identified. The roads required engineering and planning and represented a significant investment in construction and maintenance. One of the longest segments of road heads north to the communities of Salmon and Aztec.

Isolated Location
To reach Chaco Culture National Historical Park, you must travel over unpaved roads.
The National Park Service says it is leaving the roads unpaved to keep park visitation at a manageable level, protect cultural resources from deterioration, maintain a casual and relaxed atmosphere, and devote park funds to ranger tours, hikes and talks.

According to the National Park Service: “We believe that traveling 15 or 22 miles on a dirt road is a small price to pay for the kind of park experience that is fast disappearing from our American scene.”

The recommended route to the park is from the north, via U.S. Highway 550 and County Roads 7900 and 7950. The trip includes 16 miles of rough dirt road.

Be sure to have a spare tire and a good road-service policy. Our flat tire occurred on Highway 550 after leaving the rough roads of Chaco Canyon behind. We received fast service out of Farmington. If you don’t want to take your RV into the canyon, there are several RV parks in Farmington.

Tour Begins
As you travel from Nageezi in the north on dirt and gravel roads, you come to a nine-mile-long paved loop drive that provides access to Chacoan sites. Your first stop after getting an information brochure at the National Park Service gate should be at the Visitor Center museum.

After viewing a film, you will drive along the one-way paved interior road to the trailheads for the following sites: Una Vida, Hungo Pavi, Chetro Keti, Pueblo Bonito, Kin Kietso, Pueblo Alto Complex, Casa Chiquita, Penasco Blanco, Pueblo del Arroyo and Casa Rinconada Community.

Pueblo Bonito is a featured attraction whether you have a few hours or an entire day. By the year 500, the nomadic Anasazi began the pueblo at the base of the northern canyon wall, and by the 10th century it was four stories high with more than 600 rooms and numerous kivas (ceremonial or council rooms generally below ground level). Casa Rinconada, one of the largest kivas in the Southwest, is located in the central area of the canyon and may have served communal needs.

Pueblo Bonito—Spanish for beautiful town—united many diverse peoples, serving as the cultural, spiritual and trading center for the Hopi, Navajo and other Puebloan people from present-day New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona. Pueblo Bonito typifies the Chacoans’ great architecture and masonry. Researchers estimate the year-round population for the pueblo at 50 to 100—and around 2,000 to 6,000 for the Chaco Canyon as a whole. They base their estimates on the number of habitation rooms with firepits, and the quantity of pottery vessels.

Skilled Builders
Today’s travelers owe a debt of gratitude for the architectural and masonry skills of the Native Americans who built and maintained the great houses, kivas and roadways in and around the Chaco Canyon.

Working with stone tools, they erected vast communal buildings. The earliest dwellings were built with simple walls one stone thick, held together with generous courses of mud mortar. When they began to build higher and more extensively, their techniques evolved and they employed walls with thick inner cores of rubble and thin veneers of facing stone. The walls tapered as they rose, evidence of their construction planning.

Chaco’s distinctive Cibola black-on-white pottery may have originated in outlying towns to the south and west and been brought to Pueblo Bonito for trading. Turquoise was used by craftsmen for beads, necklaces, pendants, and some pottery. Remnants were found in quantities of ornaments and work-site debris.

Though they moved from the canyon in 1100, probably due to drought, they are not forgotten—and many Southwest Indian peoples consider Chaco a sacred place where clans gathered for friendship, trade and spiritual connection.

Marilyn C. McDonald is a writer who divides time between Oregon and Mexico.

For information about the park, road conditions and Gallo Campground, visit www.nps.gov/chcu. The campground has 48 dry-camp sites, of which 15 are tent-only, on first-come-first-served basis. Sites cannot accommodate trailers or motorhomes more than 30 feet in length, as there are no pull-throughs. There are two restrooms with flush toilets, but no showers. Non-potable water is available at the camp. Drinking water is available in the Visitor Center parking area. Two group campsites for 10 to 30 people each can be reserved by calling (505) 786-7014, ext. 221.


BLM Guidelines for New Mexico
Information about camping and artifact gathering can be obtained from the Bureau of Land Management at www.nm.blm.gov. The BLM brochure titled Recreation Guidelines for New Mexico Public Lands makes these points:

Camping is allowed on most BLM managed public lands, but do not park or camp within 300 yards of any water source used by wildlife or domestic livestock.

If you bring pets, be sure they are restrained.
When no trash containers are available: pack it in, pack it out.

Gathering or collecting historical or archaeological artifacts including arrowheads, potshards, and paleontological resources, including vertebrate fossils, on public lands is illegal.