Chaco Culture National Historical Park

Chaco takes some reaching. The usual way in leaves US-550 near Nageezi, and after eight miles of pavement the last thirteen, on County Road 7950, are dirt and washboard that can turn impassable when the washes run. There is no lodging, food or fuel at the end, only the visitor center and the Gallo campground.

A paved loop runs up the canyon past the great houses. Pueblo Bonito, the largest, was raised in stages over some three centuries into a D-shaped block at least four stories high with more than six hundred rooms and dozens of kivas; rangers lead walks through it year-round. Chetro Ketl and Pueblo del Arroyo stand nearby. Trails climb the cliffs behind them to Pueblo Alto and to overlooks where a Chacoan road and the steps its builders cut into the rock can still be traced.

The isolation is part of what the park now protects. It was certified an International Dark Sky Park in 2013, and its night programs draw astronomers from far away. Yet it sits in the San Juan Basin, one of the most heavily drilled gas fields in the country. In June 2023 the Interior Department withdrew federal lands within ten miles of the park from new oil and gas leasing for twenty years, a buffer the Pueblo nations had sought for years and the Navajo Nation helped shape; some Diné landowners who hold allotments and mineral rights inside it protested, and the buffer has been argued over since.

Chaco has been a World Heritage Site since 1987, together with Aztec Ruins and several outlying great houses. Check road conditions before setting out.