Great House Pueblo Trail Self-Guided Tour Preview

Welcome to Chimney Rock National Monument and the Great House Trail. Because of its significance to our shared national heritage, Chimney Rock was designated as a national monument in 2012, one of only 11 managed by the US Forest Service. This trail leads you to the most important structure here at the national monument – the Great House Pueblo. The 2/3-mile round-trip trail to the Great House is moderately challenging. It includes an unpaved gravel route, with several sections that run along steep drop-offs with no handrails. The Great House is at 7,600 feet elevation- please consider your physical health and willingness to be exposed to heights, especially if you are from a lower elevation.

On your hike to the Great House, you’ll learn about two big themes central to Chimney Rock. The first is that Chimney Rock was part of a larger regional community centered at Chaco Canyon, nearly 100 miles south of here in New Mexico. The Chacoan culture blossomed across the southwest a thousand years ago, and Chimney Rock is often referred to as the ultimate outlier of that remarkable civilization. How did Chimney Rock interact with Chaco Canyon and what did it mean to be an outlier?

The second theme is that the Great House structure at the top of this trail is a physical manifestation of the beliefs and religion of the ancestral Puebloans who lived here. They were sky watchers, and evidence suggests that they adopted rituals based on celestial events, such as the movements of the sun and moon above the horizon. You’ll hear about an especially important astronomical event known as the Northern Major Lunar Standstill, when the moonrise can be seen between the two pinnacles from the Great House Pueblo every 18.6 years. What did this phenomenon mean for the people of Chimney Rock?

These ideas, and others that you’ll hear about along the trail, illuminate just how extraordinary Chimney Rock National Monument is – a place where geology, astronomy, archaeology, and living cultures intersect, bringing people together through time in a sense of wonder.

You’ll begin by walking up the trail to an intersection with a spur trail to the Ridge House structure on your left. For your safety, do not play the audio while you walk, stay on the trail, carry water, and don’t forget your sunscreen. Most importantly, please help preserve the legacy of this special place and its link to the past. Archaeological sites are a nonrenewable resource – artifacts are fragile and irreplaceable parts of our national heritage.

Please consider leaving all food in your car. Crumbs attract rodents that tunnel and nest in sites, accelerating deterioration. Walk carefully to avoid stepping on walls, do not move rocks, and never dig or remove pieces of pottery or other artifacts. In their original context, artifacts tell stories about the past. Out of context, artifacts can lose much of their meaning. Finally, treat sites with respect as they are spiritually significant to Native Americans.

Proceed up the trail to the Ridge House structure on your left. Look for a post marked Stop 1.

Imagine a substantial settlement living up here on the mesa about a thousand years ago. This mesa-top community was one of eight villages located along the Piedra River below you, here on Chimney Rock Mesa, and across the valley on Peterson Ridge. Over a 200-year period, it is estimated that about 2,000 ancestral Pueblo Indians called this home. While this tour focuses on this specific period of 200 years, it’s important to understand that this region was home to Native Americans for thousands of years.

At your feet is the Ridge House structure, one of over 200 structures within the monument boundaries. The Ridge House represents a type of prehistoric home called a pithouse. Pithouses were circular and typically subterranean. The floor and base of a house were made from dirt and stone. The walls and ceiling were made of wooden poles and adobe for insulation and filling in the cracks, creating a mounded shell. This pithouse was excavated, restored and stabilized by archaeologists in 1970, but left without a roof so you can see inside.

The Ridge House is rather unique in its design and differs from other pithouses here and across the southwest. What makes it different? The rooms are circular like other pithouses, but unlike the others, the rooms are entirely above ground, maybe due to shallow soil on bedrock.

Like typical pithouses, the entrance would have been through the roof, but the walls are unusually thick, possibly to support a second floor or to insulate the rooms during winter. Also, the rooms were not built all at once. The home expanded over the years, possibly as the family grew. The section on your left is the oldest, built about 1,100 years ago. The sections to your right were built about 100 years later. This configuration may mean that the structure expanded with the family, using shared walls like today’s condominiums - unlike the single family dwellings that you can see along the Great Kiva Trail down below.

You’re standing in what may have been a workroom shared by all residents. The adjacent small rooms were used for preparing meat, grinding corn, and for storage.

As you look into the room below, note the deflector stone at the base of the inside wall– this was part of an efficient ventilation and exhaust system using the hole in the stone wall behind it, and protected the fire from draft. Cooler oxygenated air came from the ventilation hole, while warm, smoky air was pushed out the roof hole. The fire pit may look artificial but it is an authentic reproduction of the adobe fire pits that were often used.

Ninety percent of the Ridge House structure has been reconstructed, but you can see some of the original adobe along the lower levels. The rubble mounds around you may be the remains of additional collapsed walls. The rocks were removed from the rooms during excavation. The wooden roof beams deteriorated or were lost over time. Mounds along the mesa edge are unexcavated structures.

Return to the main trail, turn left, and continue uphill until you reach STOP 2. Can you spot the pithouses along the trail?

It’s a mystery why people built along this mesa- high above the valley where perennial water, firewood, clay for pottery and game animals were located. Perhaps they wanted to be closer to Chimney Rock and Companion Rock. Perhaps this is where people of a higher status lived. Or, maybe these structures were only used during ceremonial times.

The circular depression in front of you is an example of a typical pithouse. It was originally dug down to bedrock and a rock wall was built around the depression—you can see a portion of the original wall near the edge of the mesa. The bedrock floor was smoothed and leveled with adobe, creating a hard floor.

It was originally excavated in 1921 by archaeologists from the University of Colorado in Denver. This group was the first to excavate and document the Great House, the Guard House, these pithouses, and some sites in the valley below. They found complete ceramic vessels, shell and turquoise jewelry, animal effigies and feather holders now curated at the Denver Museum, the Canyon of the Ancients Visitor Center and the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.

By today’s standards, the excavation techniques of the early 20th century were destructive - wooden roof beams were burned by the archaeologists in their camp and cook fires.

Proceed up the trail to STOP 3, where the trail narrows at the base of the switchbacks.

As you can see for yourself, the people of Chimney Rock had commanding views of their neighborhood. From here, you can see the Piedra River, and the valley where corn would have been grown. Also visible is Peterson Ridge, a long rock outcrop high above the valley floor.

But why would you build your home up here …far above the valley ... when it was much easier to find water, food, and firewood down below? There are several theories: Maybe this is where people of a higher status lived? Maybe it was not inhabited year round? But used primarily as a ceremonial center? But maybe it was both of these reasons.

You may have heard the term "Anasazi" used to refer to the people who lived here and throughout southwestern Colorado. "Anasazi" is actually a Navajo word that generally means "ancient ones who are not our people". Today we use the term "Ancestral Puebloans" to refer to those who came before, and to show a connection to those who are here today.

Please continue along the trail to the next interpretative panel on the right, entitled, The Rising Sun.

Remember down at the Ridge House – the first structure – we learned that Chimney Rock was part of a larger regional community centered at Chaco Canyon, 100 miles away in New Mexico. Chimney Rock was not an isolated community. People may have visited from Chaco Canyon or other Chacoan communities for trade festivals or religious ceremonies.

There are no known roads from here to Chaco Canyon. And without cell phones, email, or even snail mail, how would the ancestral Puebloans have shared their calendrical information, or invited people to come for a festival or other activity?

They may have used signal fires at various locations. Evidence of large fires located here on the High Mesa suggests that they could have been used to share information with Chaco Canyon about significant events, such as solstices and major lunar standstills. In fact, in 1990 Katy Freeman, an innovative high school student from Farmington, New Mexico demonstrated with signal mirrors that there is a direct line of sight between the Huerfano Mesa and the Great House Pueblo.

Huerfano Mesa is the farthest mesa visible to the southwest, in the direction of the parking lot where you started. From that far off mesa, signal fires could be seen at Far View house at Mesa Verde and Pueblo Alto in Chaco Canyon.

Please watch your footing as you continue up the trail steps to STOP 5, the Guard House.

Although you can’t see the remains of the structure that was once here, you’re standing in the location of the Guard House. Despite its name, no one knows its exact purpose. However, its location across the narrow causeway hints at its role in controlling access to the Great House. Any visitors to the Great House would have had to walk through the Guard House.

The Guard House itself would have prevented you from seeing the Great House. Why do you supposed it was designed that way? Why might some people have been turned away?

The Guard House is an example of another unique Chimney Rock architectural style – a round structure enclosed by a square masonry wall, similar to what you’ll see at the Great House at the next stop. This style indicates it was inspired by Chacoan architecture – a hybrid of a circular pithouse and a rectangular masonry room.

You may wonder why you can’t see evidence of the Guard House structure. Periods of excavation have occurred here since the 1920s. Since then, the site has been protected and a nylon mesh cloth covers what remains below your feet.

Today, there is a balance between excavating sites versus preserving them in an undisturbed state. Excavation and restoration are extremely expensive. And as the field of archaeology advances, better tools and techniques will allow us to learn more with less disturbance to the sites.

Please continue to STOP 6, located slightly before a small wooden frame on the Great House wall.

Welcome to the most important site here at Chimney Rock!

The architecture of the Great House Pueblo is one of the most striking and convincing features showing a connection to the larger Chacoan community. Recent architectural analysis shows that the Great House was built by Chacoans or under the direction of Chacoans. It was not simply a copy built by the ancestral Puebloans at Chimney Rock.

As a point of reference in time, the high point of Chaco architecture coincides with that of the high point of Gothic architecture in Europe. Think of the astounding amount of work required to build the Great House. An estimated one million stone blocks had to be carried up the mesa to 7,600 feet and then hand-shaped. Imagine the sweat, blood, and time required to move that much rock!

This section of wall under the wooden frame is the only section of wall in its original state. Note the difference in masonry between these rocks and those in the rest of the wall. You’ll see that cement was added to most of walls for stabilization purposes.

Look to your left at the line in the wall where two sections meet. It may be that the sections were built by two different groups of people who used this site together. It could also imply two different time periods of construction. The long exterior walls and overall footprint of the Great House suggest that the structure was planned, while architectural features and rooms were filled in as time and space allowed.

As you walk to the next stop, you’ll see a pile of rocks set off to the right side of the trail. During previous excavations and stabilization projects, these rocks were removed from rooms to measure the volume of walls that had collapsed.

Continue to a fork in the trail, turn to your left and follow the trail markers to STOP 7 at a viewpoint overlooking the Great House.

As you view the Great House, please take care not to stand on the walls or disturb the structure.

The Chacoan style Great House represents a direct association with the Chaco culture through its architectural style and masonry work. These style elements include straight walls with square corners, pecked or hand-chipped rock faces, large stone blocks with small flat stone chinking, and interior wall doorways. Another style clue is the core and veneer walls, where fill between the two walls provided extra stabilization.

Because it is located high above any source of water or fields for crops, it was most likely built for something other than the convenience of its inhabitants, such as viewing important astronomical phenomena. However, its exact use is still a great question of southwest archaeology.

The room you walked through to get to this overlook may have been a kitchen-type room, where archaeologists found remains of locally grown corn. If you turn towards Chimney Rock, you’ll see several small rooms that could have served as places to store various economic goods while awaiting future redistribution. Some rooms were also used to store ritual items used in ceremonies. Other rooms were found completely empty. These rooms could have been guest rooms occupied during special times of the year.

Note the buttresses built to support the exterior walls to keep the force of the insulating dirt from pushing out – a clever engineering feature!

Kivas, the round interior rooms, are special-purpose ceremonial structures. The benches in the kivas were possibly used for displaying ceremonial items. Now look into the east kiva – the one closest to Chimney Rock – and notice a hole built into the top of the far wall. Then find a smaller hole on the floor of the kiva that is connected to the top hole by a tunnel. Can you imagine its function? If you said “ventilation” you’re correct! Underground stone duct work is yet another Chacoan feature of the Great House.

In the 1970s, Dr. Frank Eddy of the University of Colorado surveyed, excavated, and restored the Great House Pueblo and several other structures here on the mesa. Much later, in 2009, the Colorado School of Mines used ground penetrating radar to map the unexcavated area west of the reconstructed portion of the Great House. Results indicate that more rooms are attached to Great House underneath the dirt and grass.

Now it’s time to focus our attention on the two pinnacles themselves and imagine a once-in-a- lifetime event viewed from here - the Northern Major Lunar Standstill. For orientation sake, the “Chimney Rock” is the right-side thinner rock pinnacle, while “Companion Rock” is the left-side wider rock formation. The Northern Major Lunar Standstill is a natural phenomenon when the moon can be seen rising between the two pinnacles, as viewed from the Great House.

Archaeologists believe that the phenomenon of the Northern Major Lunar Standstill was of enough importance to the people of Chimney Rock that they built the Great House Pueblo to observe this extraordinary event. Evidence suggests that residents of Chimney Rock were sky watchers, who may have adopted rituals based on celestial events, such as the movements of the sun and moon in relation to the two pinnacles. What is this evidence? Many building clusters have views of Chimney Rock and Companion Rock. Kim Malville, professor emeritus of astrophysics and planet sciences at the University of Colorado, has shared his findings about the major lunar standstill in his book “Chimney Rock the Ultimate Outlier.”

To understand how the major lunar standstill happens, it’s important to know that the moon’s orbit of Earth oscillates. As a result, the moon rises at different locations on the earth’s horizon, swinging from north to south and back, like a pendulum. Over the course of a year, the pendulum swings to the northernmost point on the horizon during the full moon nearest the winter solstice. Over a cycle of 18.6 years, the people of Chimney Rock would have noticed that at the northernmost point in its multiyear journey, the moon would rise between the two pinnacles.

The two kivas, contained within the walled quadrangle of the Great House, may have been built for the viewing of the Northern Major Lunar Standstill. Wood beam samples date to AD 1076 and nearly 18 years later in AD 1093. Both of these dates correlate to the dates of lunar standstills. There are possibly other earlier construction phases that coincide with Major Lunar Standstills. In addition, there may be other celestial alignments that were viewed from here.

As you gaze back and forth between the Great House and the two pinnacles, consider the significance that the ancestral Puebloans placed on studying the sun and stars. The Chimney Rock Great House may have been the residence of high priests, who predicted the cyclical cycles of the sun, moon, its standstill, and seasonal weather patterns. They may have watched for and advised on the optimum times for planting and harvesting. This knowledge possibly gave them a higher level of authority, resulting in a hierarchy typical of Chacoan culture. The huge commitment of time, people, and resources to build the Great House may have occurred because ancestral Puebloans believed that the site was a sacred place that connected them to the celestial rhythms of the season.

Please return to the main trail and head left toward Chimney Rock. Stop 8 is at the end of the trail in front of an old building foundation.

The foundation in front of you is all that remains of the Chimney Rock Fire Tower, built in 1940 by the Civilian Conservation Corps. The tower was used for fire detection until the mid-1950s. It was removed in 2010 so future lunar standstill would be visible from the Great House.

A water tank and outhouse were located between where you are standing and the Great House Pueblo. The outhouse was where the thick oak brush is now growing. An overland wire ran down to the highway providing telephone service to the tower.

Today, peregrine falcons nest on the pinnacles and soar over ancient structures, but there was a time when this was extremely rare. In 1970, peregrine falcons were listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Then, a pair of peregrine falcons were discovered nesting on the stone pillars in 1974 and again in 1992. A dramatic recovery led to delisting of the falcons in 1999. Today, management of Chimney Rock allows for visitor access while preserving the wild nature of the nesting sites.

You have reached the end of the Great House tour. We invite you to linger here at the top, enjoy the view, and ponder the many unanswered questions of Chimney Rock, here at the intersection of grand geology, remarkable archaeology, and captivating astronomy.

Please take care on your return hike to the parking lot. Thank you for visiting Chimney Rock National Monument, on the San Juan National Forest.