— TrevorGet a Park Passport. It's an inexpensive souvenir, and a good reminder of your visit. Our family loves to collect them.
Chaco Canyon was a major center of Puebloan culture between AD 850 and 1250. The Chacoan sites are part of the homeland of Pueblo Indian peoples of New Mexico, the Hopi Indians of Arizona, and the Navajo Indians of the Southwest.
For all the wild beauty of Chaco Canyon's high desert landscape, its long winters, short growing seasons, and marginal rainfall create an unlikely place for a major center of ancestral Puebloan culture to take root and flourish. Yet this valley was the center of a thriving culture a thousand years ago. The monumental scale of its architecture, the complexity of its ceremonial life, the high level of it's community social organization, and the far-reaching nature of its commerce combine to create a cultural vision unlike any other seen before or since.