Hovenweep: Remote location adds to mystery, serenity surrounding ancient ruins

Remote, secluded and mysterious, a forbidding landscape. Many such phrases could be used to accurately describe Hovenweep National Monument, straddling a section of southeastern Utah and southwestern Colorado.

However, you could easily add "uncrowded" to that list, too, as the park only receives about 27,000 visitors a year. That's an average of about 75 people a day, meaning solitude and serenity are plentiful here, though rare in most national park settings today.

The 45 mile drive out of Blanding on lonely, isolated roads may make you wonder if you made the right decision to visit the park. Yet once there, you can peacefully contemplate why the ancestors of today's Pueblo Indian tribes built in this rugged area, on rocks and along cliffs, and why they left. You'll appreciate the quiet.

Chris Nickel, lead ranger at Hovenweep, said everything is a bit more subtle here, in contrast to the much more popular Mesa Verde National Park. Hovenweep protects six prehistoric, Puebloan-era villages spread over a 20-mile expanse of mesa tops and canyons.

"It's different settings here," he said.

Nickel recommends at least two hours to properly see the park. Its mainstay is the trail along Little Ruin Canyon for the Square Tower group of ruins, just 300 yards from the visitors center and all inside Utah. The path is paved and handicapped-accessible to the first lookout, but then it becomes dirt and rough.

Except for meeting a handful of people leaving the trail as my group entered, we had the rim trail all to ourselves for our entire 45 minutes there. The centerpiece is the Hovenweep Castle, perched right on the canyon's edge.

Square Tower, located inside a portion of the canyon, was intriguing, as were most of the towers of Hovenweep, where Native Americans lived up until about 700 years ago.

"It will never be completely clear why the people left," Nickel said, adding that a long drought as well as an ever-increasing population is the likely reason.

The trail loops 1.5-miles and can be covered in about an hour. However, a half-mile rim walk takes only about 20 minutes and is well worth it, though that's likely the absolute minimum for such a brief visit to the ruins.

Florence Nick, 15, from Cologne, Germany, said she liked the Castle ruin the best. She was also amazed anyone could live in such a rugged area.

Unlike many such ruins, most of the relics in the park are not roped off. Visitors should not climb, sit, touch or disturb any of the ruins. They should also remain on established trails. Pets are allowed on the paths, if leashed.

And children should be supervised around the ruins and the cliffs.