Hovenweep National Monument - Utah
Posted by: 
94RedRover
N 37° 19.595 W 108° 59.468
12S E 677983 N 4132994
Hovenweep National Monument was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. The "Monument" is actually a collection of ancestral ruin sites scattered in the southeast Utah and southwest Colorado region.
Waymark Code: WM5TZJ
Location: Colorado, United States
Date Posted: 02/13/2009
Views: 8
"...It is difficult for many to believe that Hovenweep Once supported a large population, perhaps more people than there are today in the whole county of San Juan. Old-timers, however, point out that "Hovenweep" in the Ute Indian tongue (the "o" is long, as in "over") means "deserted valley," and often add "no wonder."
Padres Escalante and Dominguez passed by the region of the Hovenweep dwellings in 1776, discovered one ruin in what is now southwestern Colorado, damned it with a passing reference, and left it for W.H. Holmes and W. H. Jackson of the Hayden expedition to rediscover, together with others on McElmo Creek, an even century later."
--- Utah: A Guide to the State, 1941
Hovenweep National Monument consists of the ruins of six prehistoric "villages" spread out over 20 miles in the southwest corner of Colorado and the southeast of Utah. These ruins are amidst the Canyons of the Ancients (site of thousands of archeological sites maintained by the Bureau of Land Management or BLM) Most of the archeological sites in this area are difficult to get to, with difficult terrain and unmaintained roads.
We entered the area of gulches and canyons off Route 491 in Pleasant View, onto County Road CC...and drove through miles of modern agricultural land. Soon, among the cornfields, we found the first of the archeological sites...and realized this land has been farmed for centuries.