Posts Tagged With: Hovenweep National Monument

Blanding Utah, Sunday June 6, 2021

Hovenweep National Monument is probably the last NPS site that we had not visited, until today, that relates to the Ancestral Puebloan people. I thought that the monument would be deserted, located about 45 miles from Cortez CO and equally so from Blanding Utah. The last annual visitation numbers I had read were 40,000 annual visitors in 2017. We left Cortez at 9:30 and reached Hovenweep at 10:30. There were 15 vehicles in the parking lot and an unknown number in the campground. Many more vehicles than I expected.

Hovenweep was named by photographer William Henry Jackson who visited here in 1874. The name comes from the Ute/Paiute word meaning deserted valley. It is deserted today but estimates are the peak period here was from 1100-1300 AD. The ruins indicate a sizable population lived in this area with Hovenweep the center of activity.

Hovenweep has been protected since 1923, to prevent the theft of artifacts. (It may still be occurring. There have been successful federal stings to catch thieves.)There are six areas under protection, located in Utah and Colorado. Most of these require high clearance vehicles to reach them. The Stone Tower group is accessible from the visitor center so we spent our time there. Besides its ties to the Ancestral Puebloans, Hovenweep is known for its amazing and unusual number of towers. Towers, round, D-shaped, and square, were built in the late 1200s and many still stand today. The architectural detailing and stone craftsmanship are outstanding.

The loop trail takes one past several unique dwellings. Hovenweep Castle (named by white Americans, not the Pueblo people) is fashioned by two D-shaped towers on the rim of the canyon. Square Tower is two stories tall and built down in the canyon. Twin Towers had 16 rooms located in one oval tower and one horseshoe shaped. Eroded Boulder House was built under a huge rock which acts as its roof. Chris thought a few of the buildings and ruins resembled hobbit houses.

The tour took us about 1.5 hours to make the 2 mile loop with a descent into and ascent out of the canyon. The park ranger explained various hiking options, noting that it was very hot out and no judgments would be made if people only took a short hike. We started out thinking we would only do a little less than one-half of the total trail but ended up completing the whole trail.

After a picnic lunch, it was off to Blanding Utah. At Blanding we are spending the night in our first Air Bnb for probably two years. The drive here was again on the Great Sage Plain, with sage brush flat fields alternating with rock outcroppings.

Little surprises still pop up. We were driving in an area without any major concentration of buildings when we came upon a Little Free Library. It was one-third of the way to Hovenweep and placed by the side of the highway. It had a great scenic backdrop. Chris did not find any books of interest. We saw one vineyard and several farms with horses. As we got closer to Hovenweep, the irrigation system seemed to end and we no longer saw lush green fields.

Blanding has no major hotels and few restaurants but the town’s visible infrastructure seems in good shape. Tomorrow’s destination is Natural Bridges National Monument. It is one hour away and Blanding is the nearest community to it.

Side comment. We have driven through portions of Colorado for seven days. It has to be the state with the least use of traffic paint of any state that I can recall. Highways or city streets, it did not matter. Not the end of the earth but just something different to end the blog and our time in Colorado.

Ed Heimel, Chris Klejbuk Sunday June 6 Blanding Utah