Chaco Canyon Small Group Full Day Tour

What your day looks like

Transport yourself into another world, at Chaco Canyon! This UNESCO World Heritage Site and National Park lies on top of the southeastern Colorado Plateau’s physiographic province in the San Juan Basin and had a diverse thriving culture from 830 A.D. to 1250 A.D. It served as the heart of spiritual and ceremonial practices for the Chacoan people. Our journey begins with a visit to Una Vida, an L-shaped Great House where you can explore a petroglyph panel etched in the canyon’s cliffside sandstone. These petroglyph panels are pecked, incised, and abraded into the sandstone and their significance is still recognizable today by Puebloan and Navajo peoples because they symbolize specific clans or story elements. If the short steep climb seems too much for you, the other option is to visit Chaco Canyon’s Visitors’ Center museum and watch the 20-minute interpretive film. After either excursion, you will enjoy a gourmet picnic lunch under a covered pavilion. Pueblo Bonito is the most thoroughly investigated and celebrated cultural site in Chaco Canyon. The term “great house” is an archeologist term to describe the large sites in Chaco. These great houses shared many architectural features such as planned layouts, multi-storied construction, distinctive masonry, very large rooms, plazas, and huge subterranean ceremonial chambers called “great kivas.” You will learn about the first excavators and their findings as you explore the important Room 28 where 111-cylinder jars, a tall and narrow form of pottery, were found. These cylinder jars were used for drinking a chocolate beverage made from the cacao tree brought from Central Mexico, believed to be drunk by high-ranking people during rituals. This journey would have been nearly 1200 miles away from Chaco! You will conclude your visit to the greatest kiva, Casa Rinconada. Casa Rinconada is a large round building complex. The symmetry of the axes creates a perfect circle and some speculate it physically represents the Ancestral Puebloan cosmos and served as an important religious center. Throughout the day, you’ll be dismayed at the obvious societal advances and ponder what created their sudden failure and destruction.