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| A lone standing wall is all that remains of Castle Rock Pueblo. |
From the Sand Canyon South Trailhead parking lot, where my little Kia was parked in this image, the trail leads you up a sloping stretch of slickrock and around a sandstone butte known as Battle Rock. That's Battle Rock in the upper right corner of the image of my car in the parking lot and it can also be seen in this image along with the BLM sign for Canyon of the Ancients. As the trail rounds Battle Rock, a spur leads you to the day's first ruins.
All that remains of this once sprawling village known as Castle Rock Pueblo is this lone standing wall. The surrounding ground is littered with cut stones that once made 40 above ground rooms, 9 towers, a D-shaped building and at least 16 kivas. At its height, between 1250 and 1280 AD, the pueblo even included rooms and structures built on the sides and top of the butte. The Crow Canyon Archeological Center in Cortez has an interesting article on the oral history of Castle Rock Pueblo, along with a series of photographs from an 1874 survey of the pueblo showing the remains of structures on the butte. See Figure 1 and Figure 2 to see the additional ruins. Figure 3 and Figure 4 are also interesting but don't show additional ruins.
Also, the first 3 images in the Traces of the Ancient World: Details gallery are close up views of the Ancestral Pueblo stonework from this last remaining part of Castle Rock Pueblo.
All that remains of this once sprawling village known as Castle Rock Pueblo is this lone standing wall. The surrounding ground is littered with cut stones that once made 40 above ground rooms, 9 towers, a D-shaped building and at least 16 kivas. At its height, between 1250 and 1280 AD, the pueblo even included rooms and structures built on the sides and top of the butte. The Crow Canyon Archeological Center in Cortez has an interesting article on the oral history of Castle Rock Pueblo, along with a series of photographs from an 1874 survey of the pueblo showing the remains of structures on the butte. See Figure 1 and Figure 2 to see the additional ruins. Figure 3 and Figure 4 are also interesting but don't show additional ruins.
Also, the first 3 images in the Traces of the Ancient World: Details gallery are close up views of the Ancestral Pueblo stonework from this last remaining part of Castle Rock Pueblo.
