Humble Beginnings

Remains of a Pit House

Remains of a mesa top pueblo.

If you've heard of Mesa Verde National Monument, you no doubt think of amazing Cliff Dwellings built into natural alcoves that dot the canyon walls in the park. These iconic cliff dwellings are indeed the main draw for Mesa Verde, however the people who actually lived here had much more humble beginnings. Occupation in the area predates the cliff dwellings by centuries. In fact, the cliff dwellings that Mesa Verde is so famous for represent only a brief sliver at the end of the pueblo culture's timeline in the area.

Along with representing only a brief time span, the cliff dwellings represent only a fraction of the archeological sites found within the park's borders. Of the close to 5,000 archeological sites, only about 600 are cliff dwellings and many of those are far less impressive than the park's best known dwelling, Cliff Palace.

Long before the Ancestral Puebloans moved into the cliff dwellings, they occupied mesa top adobe villages and before those pueblos, the people built and lived in pit houses. The top image here is a 4 or 5 image panorama showing the remains of one of these pit houses. They weren't much more than a shallow depression in the ground that would be covered by a roof of logs and wood. These early homes, while unassuming, would leave their mark on Puebloan culture and modern.

Small, one room adobe structures began to replace the pit house as a primary residence and would eventually grow into multi-room pueblos, or villages. The second image shows the remains of a small, 2 or 3 room pueblo. (Actually it shows the remains of 2 such villages, but the second village is far in the background, near the back wall of the modern, protecting structure and is barely visible.) The structure in the immediate foreground isn't a pit house, it's what the pit house grew into, a kiva. Kivas became an integral part of Ancestral Puebloan culture and are still used by the descendants of the Ancestral Puebloans, namely the Hopi. Today, kivas are used mostly as ceremonial spaces, but in ancient times they were more utilitarian places, serving as living areas as well as ceremonial and sometimes just for storage.

The kiva, at least in my mind, is a trademark feature of the Ancestral Puebloans. While I'm not a scholar, I have read quite a bit about the culture and have never heard of an Ancestral Puebloan village without a kiva and most villages had quite a few kivas. And that's not counting Great Kivas such as those found in Chaco Canyon or Aztec Ruins, but that's a story for another day!

Walls of Escalante Pueblo

Walls

This image was taken from the other side of the pueblo, looking back in the direction I took the image in my last post from. The light that day was perfect. The large fluffy clouds not only added some interest to the sky but also filtered the sun light just right to really make all the details in this image pop. The details and the relationship between the walls and overgrown grasses and shrubs was my main focus for this image so even though the colors popped quite nicely in the perfect light as well, I converted this one to black and white. That way, the colors couldn't dominate the details.

And that's it from Escalante Pueblo and the Anasazi Heritage Center. I'm currently working on finishing the processing on my Mesa Verde photos and can't wait to start sharing them!

OK, one more image from Escalante Pueblo:

A 2 row, many-many image panoramic of Escalante Pueblo

Escalante Pueblo Vertical Panorama

The remains of Escalante Pueblo overlook the surrounding area.

This four frame panorama of Escalante Pueblo helps show what made this hill top location a perfect location for a village. The hill itself isn't large enough to be self contained (no arable land or water source) but both are readily available nearby. The reservoir visible in the distance (upper left, just below the horizon) is a modern construction, however it would not have been built where there wasn't already a sizable water source. If you look closely, there are modern buildings in the distance (to the right of the reservoir). Many of these are farms and ranches, indicating good arable land.

Additionally, many scholars theorize that the downfall of the Ancestral Puebloan civilization was accompanied with violent warfare between neighbors fighting over dwindling resources in a drought. A hill top location would have made it much easier to defend and detect incoming threats.

And let's not discount the view. It's easy to imagine that even eight hundred years ago, people would have appreciated a view as amazing as this one.

Anasazi Heritage Center & the Escalante Pueblo

Time to move on from my Sand Canyon Trail images. There's still plenty more to see in the gallery, and it's not that the rest aren't worth a write up, it's just that I want to move on to other parts from my Colorado trip, so be sure to check out the gallery for other Sand Canyon images.

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Layers

My hike along Sand Canyon Trail didn't take as long as I had planned for, so rather than sitting around, I drove up the road a little ways to the Anasazi Heritage Center (that's a link to their site, click here for my image of the center) in nearby Dolores, Colorado. If you're ever in the area, and have an interest in the Ancestral Puebloans, stop by this museum. It only takes a $3 donation to get in, is one of the best museums for the Ancestral Puebloans around and has a couple small pueblo ruins on the grounds.

The smaller of the two pueblos, Dominguez Pueblo, sits right out front of the museum but isn't extraordinarily interesting on its own. I'm not sure I even took a photo of it. If I did, it wasn't interesting enough when I reviewed it at home to save it from the trash bin. Escalante Pueblo on the other hand, is a bit more interesting. A half mile trail of switchbacks leads from the Anasazi Heritage Center uphill to Escalante Pueblo and offers 360 degree views of the surrounding area, but I'll get into that more with the next image.

This image has been my desktop background at work for a while now. There's just something pleasing to me about it. The more I look at it, the more I enjoy the layers within it, the scrub bush in the foreground, the v-shape of the walls, curve of the hill and the brilliant blue cloud filled sky. Definitely a favorite from the trip (I'm pretty picky about my desktop backgrounds, so the fact that this one has lasted so long is proof that I like it)!

Sand Canyon Trail | Saddlehorn Hamlet in Color

A close up and panoramic view of Saddlehorn Pueblo

Another panoramic image of Saddlehorn Pueblo. This time I got up close and took 6 images horizontally then stitched them together in Photoshop. There's some noticeable distortion from being so close to the structure when taking this image but I like it anyway! The walls were a bit straighter in person than they appear here, but I like the feeling that they're coming out to meet you.

Sand Canyon Trail | Saddlehorn Hamlet B&W

Saddlehorn Hamlet in Black & White

This pueblo is known as Saddlehorn Hamlet and it's the next major stop along the Sand Canyon Trail after the Unnamed Ruin. As you can probably guess, the pueblo got its name from the unique rock formation above it. This area is composed mostly of sandstone, which makes for some really cool shapes in the rocks. The soft, porous nature of the sandstone in the area made these somewhat iconic alcoves possible for the Ancestral Puebloans to build their homes in.

This image started out as 6 individual frames that were "stitched" together in Photoshop and made for an enormous vertical image. However the sky and immediate foreground were largely uninteresting, so I opted to go with the square crop on it and lose those areas.

I've got a couple more images from Sand Canyon to come, then it's on to the Mesa Verde images!!!

Sand Canyon Trail | Unnamed Ruin

As the new year begins, I again have to acknowledge that I've let my blog sort of wither away. As the homepage for my site, it's just not acceptable to go nearly 2 full months without a new post. Yes, it was an extremely busy 2 months (there was a new promotion at work and an engagement to my wonderful gal, Kristen just to name a couple big things), but still. That said, I've got a few things planned for my site to make sure it doesn't keep up like this! Stay tuned for updates! In the meantime, I probably won't write quite as much about each image, not that I was particularly verbose about many, but hopefully just a few words will be easier to spit out and get the images coming faster!

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A small unnamed ruin along Sand Canyon Trail

Considering the size of this small ruin, I took an absolute ton of photos of it. More can be seen in my Sand Canyon gallery and there are several others on my hard drive. Maybe it's because I found it so early on along the trail. I wasn't tired or overheated yet so I took my time and played around.

This sign is a good reminder to all when visiting ruins of this type, especially in a less developed, less preserved area such as Sand Canyon. These structures are 800+ years old and have withstood the elements without maintenance for much of that time. Even if you're "just going to take a quick photo" or you're "not going to touch anything," please, keep your distance. One wrong move and this structure that has survived for centuries could be gone in an instant.

Future generations thank you for your caution!