Chaco Canyon

Chaco Culture, in the high desert of northwestern New Mexico, was the centre of a sophisticated Ancestral Puebloan society that flourished from about AD 850 to 1150. Its builders raised monumental, multi-storey 'great houses' of finely fitted masonry — the largest, Pueblo Bonito, once had hundreds of rooms and rose four or five storeys — aligned to the cycles of the sun and moon.

Chaco was the hub of a regional system linked by an extraordinary network of wide, dead-straight roads radiating across the desert to outlying communities. Despite the scale of its architecture, much about Chaco remains mysterious. It is a U.S. National Historical Park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, prized as much for its dark skies as its ruins.

Spring and autumn bring the most comfortable temperatures; summers are hot and winters cold, with access roads sometimes blocked by mud or snow. Chaco is also a certified International Dark Sky Park, so clear nights offer superb stargazing and astronomy programs.

Over three centuries, the people of Chaco built a dozen great houses and many smaller sites, moving enormous quantities of sandstone and timber (the latter carried from mountains dozens of kilometres away) without draft animals or the wheel. The buildings show remarkable astronomical alignments, and structures like the 'Sun Dagger' on Fajada Butte marked solstices and equinoxes with shafts of light.

Around AD 1150, amid a severe drought, the Chacoan centre declined and its people dispersed, their descendants among today's Pueblo peoples. The site's straight roads, great kivas, and the sheer effort embodied in its architecture point to Chaco as a powerful ceremonial, economic, and political centre, though its exact functions are still debated.

Chaco is famously remote: reaching it requires driving long, rough, unpaved roads that can be impassable after rain or snow, with no services nearby. The loop road within the park connects the major great houses, several reachable by short trails. Visitors should arrive self-sufficient with fuel, food, and water.

Chaco is sacred to many modern Pueblo, Hopi, and Navajo peoples, who maintain ties to the place of their ancestors. Its precise masonry, astronomical alignments, and the vast organization required to build it reveal a complex society at the heart of the ancient Southwest.

Check road conditions before setting out and carry plenty of water and a full tank. Stay for the night sky if you can — camping in the park puts you under some of the darkest skies in the U.S.