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Hovenweep National Monument
Solitude and mystery. These are qualities that make a string of ancient Puebloan villages along the Utah-Colorado border special.
Hovenweep National Monument.
Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News |
In 1923, when tourists began traveling miles along backcountry dirt and muddy roads to see the ruins, the area was designated as a national monument to preserve the site's historic value.
The very name of the monument, Hovenweep, stresses the hush stillness found there: The word, derived from the Ute language, is said to mean "deserted valley."
The 784-acre Hovenweep National Monument is in the middle of sloping Cajon Mesa, which is a portion of what was named, a century ago, the Great Sage Plain, although juniper, pinion and grasslands are just as likely to be found in the vicinity.
Today's Hovenweep National Monument encompasses a scattering of small farming villages, given names like Square Tower, Hackberry, Horseshoe, Holly, Cajon and Cutthroat Castle.
Sandstone walls sprout from cliff ledges and cling to the rocks. The ruins often appear deceivingly medieval — a startling impression, considering that the time frame for their construction roughly coincides with the rise of castles, cathedrals and feudal fortifications in Europe.
The ragged stone ruins of Hovenweep were observed by pioneers and explorers well before those of the more famous Mesa Verde complex in Colorado. W.D. Huntington, a Mormon settler, reported about them in 1854. William Henry Jackson, a photographer and explorer, visited them in 1874 and is credited with applying the name "Hovenweep."
The man behind their preservation, though, was J.W. Fewkes, who headed an archaeological survey in 1917-18 for the Smithsonian Institution and recommended that they be protected.
What sets the Hovenweep hamlets apart from hundreds of others atop and along the Four Corners region's plains and plateaus is their placement at a sequence of canyon heads on the Cajon Mesa and their distinctive architecture: several multistory "towers" are sprinkled among the ancient buildings, and sometimes they are peculiarly placed atop huge boulders.
Some towers are square, like the one that gave its name to the principal Hovenweep complex, the Square Tower Group. The paved rural roads lead to this location, which includes a monument's ranger station and campground. Not all of the towers take this form, however. Some are D-shaped, circular or oval.
Those who dwelled at Hovenweep more than 700 years planted and harvested corn, beans and squash. They lived at Hovenweep toward the end of what is often referred to as the Anasazi, or ancestral Puebloan, era in the Four Corners region, in the 12th and 13th centuries. Up to 500 people may have lived in and around the Square Tower canyon settlement, in structures that have descriptive modern names like Eroded Boulder House, the Twin Towers, Stronghold House and Stronghold Tower.
When Hovenweep, Mesa Verde and other northern settlements were deserted about 1300 A.D., possibly as a result of an extended drought, overpopulation or other pressures on the land, the peoples of the area apparently migrated south to join or establish other Puebloan villages.
In the 1970s, fewer than 10,000 people visited Hovenweep National Monument over the course of a year. Now, because of increased publicity and paved roads leading from Cortez, Colo., and Blanding and Aneth in San Juan County, more than 30,000 people visit the ruins per year.
The National Park Service prefers that visitors stop by the ranger station at Square Tower to check in and ask directions. Services are also scarce, so gas up before you go, and take along food and water.
For more information visit the monument's Web site at www.nps.gov/hove/.
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