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The Towers of Hovenweep

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Hovenweep Isn’t Far As the Crow Flies from Chaco Canyon

One of the things I love about the archaeology of the Southwestern U.S. are the many mysteries relating to the Anasazi, “The Old Ones.” A few days ago, I wrote about Chaco Canyon, which turned my mind to Hovenweep in Southeast Utah, which I visited twice. Hovenweep National Monument is out of the way, so it doesn’t receive as many visitors as Canyon de Chelly, Mesa Verde, or even Chaco Canyon.

The view east from Hovenweep is toward Sleeping Ute Mountain in Colorado. We are very close here to the Four Corners area, where the boundaries of four states come together: Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado. Here is the view of Sleeping Ute Mountain:

Sleeping Ute Mountain in Nearby Colorado

I suspect that Hovenweep was at or near the boundary with some other ancient people. Why else would they feel the need to construct towers, which look as if they were intended for self-defense. The ruins are built around a tiny canyon which is crossed by the trail that surrounds the site. Here I suspect was the source of the water they needed in this dry area, though Martine and I did not see any when we were there.

As with most Anasazi ruins, there are a whole lot more questions than answers. (But isn’t that always the case?) The Anasazi left a lot of pictographs but no body of writing—and certainly no explanations. In their time (roughly from 200 BC to AD 1500—just before the Spanish showed up), they built a lot of interesting structures in the San Juan River valley that was their center. What happened to them? They probably became the Pueblo Indians of Arizona and New Mexico. They were probably forced to move from places like Chaco and Hovenweep because the drought that bedeviled them became chronic.

Surviving Wall of One of the Hovenweep Towers

Very Old Water

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Lower Emerald Pool at Zion National Park

This is a re-post from the visit Martine and I made to the National Parks of Utah in 2007. Minor changes have been made to this post originally dated October 4, 2007.

We were on a walk and ride with one of Zion’s park rangers when we learned an interesting fact. As we stood at a viewpoint looking at little-visited Menu Falls, the ranger explained that the water seeping from the sandstone cliffs had taken a long journey from the top of the cliff down to where it descended to the Virgin River. In fact, it took 2,000 years.

When the water that poured out of the cliffs along their base appeared as rain on the Colorado Plateau, Caesar Augustus was Emperor of Rome and Jesus Christ still walked the earth.

The sandstone that formed the cliffs of Zion National Park was formed from massive dunes that once covered the area. Then the area was under water some 260 million years ago, part of prehistoric Lake Claron. Calcium carbonate from the water seeped down to the sand and helped cement it into sandstone, along with the massive weight of the lake itself, so that millions of years later, it served as a slow and massive sponge that soaked up rainfall and sent it on a long, slow journey until it reached the base of the cliff two millenia later.

Illustrated above is another one of those falls, at Lower Emerald Pool. In the extreme heat of Zion, Martine and I rested on a boulder with the deep shade and stray drops of cool (and very old) water helping us keep comfortable. The ranger had also mentioned that the sandstone purified the water in the process, but Martine and I had cool water in our canteens. I always take the precaution of leaving our canteens in the freezer so that we can be refreshed later in the day during our hikes.