Monument Valley Self Guiding Trail

Monument Valley is a Navajo Tribal Park located along the Arizona and Utah border and is famous for the massive sandstone formations that are icons of the west.

 The park draws quite a few tourists arriving by the bus load. From the Visitor Center there are good views of the best known of the formations, the East Mitten and the West Mitten. The large visitor center had a display on the Navajo Code Talkers. These were Navajos serving during the World War II who used their Navajo language over the radio, unintelligible to the Japanese. In recent years these men have really become local celebrities.

The most popular tour is the Self Guided Valley Drive. The road into the valley is dusty and rough, like the Navajo Reservation, but it is really like few other places, with the massive weather carved sandstone blocks. They remind you of how tiny we are. Many of the formations have names, the first along the route is Elephant Butte.

One stop where there is some walking is John Ford's Point. One of the features of Navajo parks is that there are vendors at every stopping point selling their artwork. They are somewhat overwhelming. The stands they sell from are usually slapdash and rickety but they do have a lot of turquoise and silver jewelry, pots, kachina dolls, and the fabulous Navajo rugs. There were a lot of foreign languages being spoken at the view points, and not all ones that I could recognize.

Another popular spot along the route is Artist's Point. There are often painters with canvas set up here to paint this scene. The orange-red sandstone formations are of the Cutler Formation from the Permian period of 160 million years ago. There are at least four arches in the park that are visited on one of the guided tours.

One of the last sites along the tour is the Thumb. This formation is similar to the balanced rock type formations that occur in Arches National Park further north.

Casa Rinconda Trail at Chaco Canyon

The Casa Rinconda Trail is a 0.5 mile loop that visits three small village sites plus a Giant Kiva in Chaco Canyon National Historic Park in northwest New Mexico.

The trail head is toward the west end of the loop road on the south side of Chaco Wash and is the last major stop around the loop.

In contrast to the multi storied engineered Great Houses that dominate the canyon, these village sites were mostly one or sometimes two stories, with thinner walls, and seem to have been remodeled and added onto as needed.

These sites were in use at the same time as the Great Houses and were places where more people actually lived.
These small village sites began as pithouses, circular depressions in the earth, and expanded with a row of room blocks for storage. Eventually the circular pithouses were lined with stone and became the ceremonial kivas.

Looking across the village site to the north Pueblo Bonito, the largest Great House in Chaco Canyon, is visible. Behind Pueblo Bonito the extent of the 30,000 tons of sandstone that crashed on the back of the site in 1941 is visible.

From this angle the crashed rubble pile looks more massive than the building site is. At the back of the Casa Rinconda Trail, stop 10, the back country trail to the Tsin Klitsin site connects.

Casa Rinconda is the largest excavated Great Kiva in Chaco Canyon and one of the largest in the Chaco Culture. It is aligned on a north and south axis. The Kiva has many of the typical features such as a bench around the perimeter, niches set into the walls, a fire pit, and pits to support the large timbers that held up the roof.
This Great Kiva has an unusual feature of a lower entryway placed beneath the steps of the northern entryway, and looks like a stone lined trench. On a previous visit here visitors were allowed to enter and walk around inside, but the way is blocked off now.

It seemed a little odd to me that such a large kiva was associated with small villages. There were many more residences here than we see but the other large kivas we see are associated with the Great Houses. Maybe it is something like a smaller college town now that can still have a giant football stadium.

Penasco Blanco Trail at Chaco Canyon

The Penasco Blanco Trail is one of four back country trails in the Chaco Canyon National Historic Park in northwest New Mexico. The trail head is at the Pueblo del Arroyo parking lot about four miles west of the Visitor Center.

The Penasco Blanco Trail is useable by mountain bikers as well as hikers. It follows the Chaco Canyon floor to the west along the north side of the canyon. The total walk out to Penasco Blanco and a pictograph site is about 3.7 miles but the last part was closed in September 2008 due to flooding along the wash.

After about 0.5 miles the trail arrives at the Kin Kletso ruins site. Kin Kletso was among the last of the Chaco structures, built around 1120 to 1130. Pueblo Bonito was more that 250 years old by then. It uses as different style, rectangular rather than D shaped.

The masonry style uses more or less same sized, loaf shaped stones rather than the layers of large and small in the earlier periods. Another back country trail, the Pueblo Alto Trail branches off here at Kin Kletso and climbs to the mesa top to sites up above.

After another 0.7 miles Casa Chiquita comes into view. This site is similar to Kin Kletso in the style and period when it was built. The rectangular style is thought to show the influences of the Ancestral Pueblo People who lived in the Mesa Verde area about 140 miles to the northwest. Mesa Verde is best known for the structures sited in alcoves on the sides of canyons, but there are also large mesa top pueblo sites. The Far View Trail in Mesa Verde has some good examples.

A little past Casa Chiquita there is a parallel trail that passes several petroglyph sites. Six are pointed out with small signs, but there are more than that. Some are at eye level and some high on the side of the canyon walls. The panels represent different cultures and periods of time. Some are at eye level and some high on the side of the canyon walls.
This one was particularly high and in a spot where you wonder how anyone got up there to do some art work. The human figure seems to appear in many locations around Chaco Canyon. The lower left figure looked like a flag at first but it seems to also be mounted on a post. It is thought to be a Kachina. The end of the petroglyph loop is 1.7 miles from the parking lot. I headed back from there,

(There is another post about the next segment of trail, use the labels for Penasco Blanco Trail. The Chaco Wash was flooded on this visit also.)

Pueblo del Arroyo Trail at Chaco Canyon

The Pueblo del Arroyo is an unusual Great House in the Chaco Canyon National Historic Park in northwest New Mexico in that it is sited along the banks of the Chaco Wash rather than against the steep sandstone cliffs. It also has an unusual orientation, the flat side of the D shape faces west rather than south.


Pueblo del Arroyo used more larger loaf shaped softer tan colored sandstone from the base of the cliffs than the older sites that used a harder sheet like rock material from the top of the mesas.
On the east side near the Chaco Wash is an unusual Triple Walled circular structure. Only about a dozen similar structures have been found in the Four Corners region. Aztec Ruins, about 70 miles north, has one that the public can view. This one was built using the softer loaf shaped sandstone. The use of the triple walled rooms is not known but we usually guess ceremonial.

There is a glimpse of the Chaco Wash here. It is thought that the wash is more eroded than it was during the era when several thousand people lived here. It was a source of water as well as sand used for building.

Circling around to the east side, there is a view of the South Gap break in the mesa walls. Chaco roads entered the canyon through the Gap, connecting with farming communities and timber gathering sites. Pilgrims to Chaco also would have traveled along the Chaco road system.

Along the north side are detailed views of the kiva and room blocks of the central part of the site. In the foreground is a keyhole shaped kiva which is more typical of kivas in the Mesa Verde area, and indicates a sharing of ideas.

Around 1200 AD the Chaco area faded as the center of Ancestral Pueblo culture and the center shifted north to the Mesa Verde area. Eventually, Mesa Verde was also abandoned, with the population shifting to the Rio Grande area in central New Mexico and the Hopi Mesas in northern Arizona.

The short loop trail starts around the west wall. This site was constructed later than the nearby Pueblo Bonito, with two phases from about 1025 AD to 1125 AD.

Pueblo Bonito Trail at Chaco Canyon

The Pueblo Bonito Trail is a 0.6 mile loop that visits the heart of the Chaco Canyon Culture that flourished between 850 AD to about 1150 in a remote canyon in northwest New Mexico.


The trail starts about four miles west of the Visitor Center along the canyon loop road. The Chetro Ketl Trail starts at the same point and branches the other way.

The large ruin site is D shaped with the flat wall facing out toward the center of the canyon, the rounded part facing the sandstone cliffs. This orientation is the opposite from some of the other sites along the canyon wall.

The trail passes by the east corner, the circles counter clockwise to the back, then cuts through to the plaza area. At the east corner is a good view of the fine stonework of the core and veneer of the thick walls.

In 1941, following a year of heavy rains, 30,000 tons of rock broke loose from the sandstone cliffs called Threatening Rock, and destroyed about 30 rooms at the back of the site.

There is evidence that the Chaco builders recognized the danger back in 850 AD when they selected the site, and built some terrace structures to shore up the detached rock segment that had a wide crack. Prayer sticks were also installed just in case.

From an overlook point in the back there is a good view of the geometric layout and the plaza area. Construction is thought to have begun here around 850 AD and continued until about 1100 AD.

It is estimated that only 50 to 100 people actually lived here and the main use was for ceremonies, trading, hosting visitors, and other special events.

Passing through the back wall into the plaza area, the trail leads to the west corner with a view back across the entire site. There is a north and south low wall here that divides the plaza area into an east and west half.

At the center of the plaza is the Great Kiva. This is on the east side of the dividing wall. This is thought to be a structure that could accommodate hundreds for community ceremonies. There would have been a roof over it and a plaza level entry way of stairs down into the subterranean seating area.

From the plaza, a trail route for the mobile passes through a series of interior rooms. There are 11 narrow doorways to go through that are 41-46 inches high. My backpack was bumping the lintels on most of them. Besides the stonework, the method of construction of the ceilings could be viewed.

A layer of large logs supported a layer of smaller ones and layers of more plant material and mud mortar were placed on top. There are a few fragments of wall plaster in some places and the unusual feature of corner doorways.