Pueblo Pintado and Chaco Culture National Historical Park - C

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Pueblo Pintado

   Pueblo Pintado stands in the high desert of northwestern New Mexico, on Navajo land, and it is the easternmost of the great houses connected to Chaco Canyon. Around a thousand years ago the people we call Ancestral Puebloans raised masonry walls here, several storeys tall, laying thin sandstone into patterns that still look careful today. The ruin has been roughened by weather, but the arrangement of rooms, the circular kivas and the long arc of the building are clear, and you can walk around it on a short trail.

   Read the complete Pueblo Pintado write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Pueblo Pintado is where the day begins. Next is Chaco Culture.

2. 2. Chaco Culture

   Getting to Chaco Canyon is part of the point. The last stretch of road into this remote corner of north-western New Mexico is unpaved, rutted and washboarded, and after rain it turns to slick mud that can make it impassable for any kind of vehicle. Take that seriously: on a road bike it is tough, and on a big touring machine it can be miserable. But the reward is extraordinary. Between roughly 850 and 1150, the Ancestral Puebloan people built monumental great houses here, multi-storey stone buildings with hundreds of rooms, aligned with the sun, moon and cardinal directions, linked by straight roads across the desert. Chaco Culture National Historical Park was listed by UNESCO in 1987.

   Read the complete Chaco Culture write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Chaco Culture comes up about 98 km into the recorded legs. Next is Pierre's site.

3. 3. Pierre's site

   North of Chaco Canyon, the Ancestral Puebloans built something that still puzzles archaeologists: a road. Not a trail, but a wide, carefully engineered path, about nine metres wide in places, running almost dead straight north across the desert for some fifty kilometres. It is known as the Great North Road, and Pierre's site sits right on it. This is a cluster of small structures built on and around a prominent sandstone outcrop, including what may have been signalling stations or shrines on top of the hill, and from its height you can see far across the San Juan Basin. Like Kin Ya'a to the south, it is protected as one of the Chaco outliers on the World Heritage list.

   Read the complete Pierre's site write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 166 km into the recorded legs you reach Pierre's site. Next is Chaco Culture National Historical Park - C.

4. 4. Chaco Culture National Historical Park - C

   Chaco is a place where you have to earn the silence. The way in is a long dirt road, many miles of corrugations and dust, that leaves the paved highway in the high desert of north-west New Mexico and runs across open range before dropping into a wide canyon, and by the time you arrive, you have been shaken and quiet for a good while. Then you see the walls. Between about the middle of the ninth century and the twelfth, the Ancestral Puebloan people built a dozen huge stone buildings here, called great houses, of which Pueblo Bonito is the largest, with hundreds of rooms in a D-shaped plan, stacked several storeys high, and a vast number of ceiling timbers carried in from forests far away.

   Read the complete Chaco Culture National Historical Park - C write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Chaco Culture National Historical Park - C, about halfway. Next is back through Pierre's site.

5. 5. back through Pierre's site

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Pierre's site write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Pierre's site sits at 313 km, about halfway. Next is back through Chaco Culture.

6. 6. back through Chaco Culture

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Chaco Culture write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Chaco Culture comes up about 371 km into the recorded legs. Next is Pueblo Pintado.

7. 7. Pueblo Pintado

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Pueblo Pintado write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Pueblo Pintado closes the day.