Those who envision state parks as wooded campsites for fishing and swimming, but who want something different, Chaco Canyon is for you. Chaco is history, mystery, and surprise.
The park is nestled in a long canyon surrounded by rocky mesa cliffs that glow in reds and purples at sunset. At one end of the valley a towering butte stands as sentinel over the sacred place. There are no trees, no water, just dry earth today, but when the Anasazi people lived here before 1300 A.D. the arroyos did flow with the rains and there was enough to grow crops to feed themselves.
Spaced widely apart are the pueblos of those resourceful people, now reduced to remains but standing tall enough for us to see into the past and understand the allure of this magical place. Archaeology is everywhere at Chaco, and you cannot help but wonder where they went, those Anasazi, when they ___ finally left their ========================= homes here. The ==== mysterious kivas == are marvels of ==== construction— == perfectly round and == precisely aligned == with the sun, built == into the ground == with an adobe brick == cap above and an == entrance via a hole == in the ceiling == through which one === climbed by ladder === while the smoke === from the central