Santa Fe 2006

We went to Santa Fe in 2006 for our third opera season. Before settling down for five straight days of opera, however, we toured northwest New Mexico and southern Colorado, to see Anasazi ruins. We saw the ruined pueblos at Chaco Canyon, Aztec, and Mesa Verde. We also visited the Anasazi Heritage Center in Dolores, CO and nearby Lowry Ruins. From Santa Fe, we did a half-day excursion to see the ruins of the Pecos pueblo, which are much later than the Anasazi, and flourished in the 15-16c and were abandoned in the 18c. The map shows our itinerary in orange, starting and finishing in Albuquerque.

Chaco Culture National Historical Park

Chaco Canyon was the center of the Anasazi culture, which fluourished 850-1135. This map shows the territory of the Anasazi and the contemporaneous Mogollon and Hohokam cultures. Chaco is best known for the Great Houses which were built both in Chaco Canyon and in outlier locations. Aztec, for example, is a Chaco outlier. Here is a timeline of construction and occupation of the Great Houses in Chaco Canyon.

Aztec Ruins National Monument

Durango

Durango is building a lot of vacation condos, and seems to have a population that is at least 80% tourists. It was a shock after the less prosperous New Mexico towns we had been visiting.
  • Steam engine (movie) The best part of Durango, for us, was the Durango & Silverton Railroad, which runs several steam engines up to Silverton and back every day, pulling a variety of cars full of tourists. The round trip takes all day, which we couldn't afford, so we just enjoyed the trains passing by. This engine is pulling out of the station.
  • Strayer Hotel We stayed here. Our room is on the right on the third floor, with a good view of a railroad crossing.
  • Audio recording of train from the window of our hotel room in the morning.

    • Mesa Verde

    Dolores

    The Anasazi Heritage Center near Dolores, CO is a byproduct of the McPhee Dam and Reservoir project, which included the Dolores Archaeological Program, the largest single archaeological project in the history of the United States. Between 1978 and 1984 researchers mapped about 1600 archaeological sites -- including hunting camps, shrines, granaries, households and villages -- along the Dolores River in the reservoir area, and excavated about 120 sites to salvage their information value.

    Between Cortez and Gallup

    Grants

    Laguna Pueblo Church

    Santa Fe

    Pecos National Historical Park

    Article about Chaco ruins

    I've scanned one article about Chaco from a book that I bought at the School for American Research in Santa Fe, and included it on this disk. Click here to see the article.

    One of the interesting issues about Chaco is where the inhabitants of those wonderful buildings went. There seems to be some competition among contemporary tribes to claim Chaco for their heritage. In the same book as the article I scanned there are three chapters about the claims of Hopis, Rio Grade pueblans, and Navaho to Chaco heritage. It's pretty clear that the Navaho, Apache, Ute, and Comanche all migrated into the area once controlled by the inhabitants of Mesa Verde, Chaco, and Aztec. Navaho were hunter-gatherers, and may have tried to gather crops planted by the Chacoans, who were farmers. Competition from these tribes may have added to the environmental pressures on Chaco. The inhabitants of Chaco have been called Anasazi, a Navaho term that means Ancestral Enemies. The principal claimants to Chaco ancestry are the contemporary Pueblo tribes, now in the Rio Grade valley. The term Anasazi is being replaced by the more politically correct term Ancestral Pueblans.