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Chaco Culture National Historical Park
The ancestral Puebloan capital of the San Juan Basin
Between about 900 and 1150, Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico was the center of the ancestral Puebloan world. Its builders raised more than a dozen great houses of finely fitted sandstone, the largest of which, Pueblo Bonito, held at least 650 rooms and rose four stories in places. Engineered roads up to 30 feet wide ran straight across the desert to dozens of outlying communities, and goods such as turquoise, shell and macaws from Mexico flowed into the canyon.
Chaco's buildings are aligned to the sun and moon, and a spiral petroglyph on Fajada Butte, the Sun Dagger, marks the solstices and equinoxes with blades of light. Today the canyon remains a sacred place for Pueblo and Navajo people. Theodore Roosevelt protected it as a national monument in 1907, it became a national historical park in 1980, and it was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. Its remote, dark skies earned it International Dark Sky Park status, and in 2023 the federal government withdrew public lands within 10 miles of the park from new oil and gas leasing for 20 years.