Hackberry Castle - Hovenweep National Monument
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94RedRover
N 37° 24.548 W 109° 01.658
12S E 674557 N 4142086
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: WM5V39
Location: Colorado, United States
Date Posted: 02/14/2009
Views: 4
"...Hackberry and Keeley canyons, over the Colorado line a short hike eastward from Ruin Canyon, contain additional dwellings and towers, the most important of which are HACKBERRY CASTLE and HORSESHOE HOUSE."
--- Utah: A Guide to the State, 1941
Both the Hackberry and Horseshoe Group Ruins are across the state line from the Hovenweep Visitor Center in Colorado, in the Canyons of the Ancients, an area spanning outhwest Colorado and southeast Utah contains a high density of ancestral Puebloan ruins. Scattered throughout this 23 square mile area, are thousands of ruins. The Hovenweep National Monument tends four groups of ruins throughout the Canyons of the Ancients. They are the Square Tower Group, Horseshoe and Hackberry Groups, Holly Group and Cutthroat Castle Group.
Just east of the Horseshoe structures is the Hackberry Site, overlooking the Hackberry Canyon. Constant and ample water seepage in this canyon may have attributed to Hackberry being the largest popoulation of "villages" in the canyons. Anywhere between 250 to 350 people may have lived here.
Like other groups in the canyons, both Horseshoe and Hackberry have the defining characteristics of the late Puebloen period. These include large multi-story pueblos and towers, located at canyon heads with seeps and springs. Rains were intermittent rains so for the survival of crops, the Puebloans constructed water-control features, with stone dams.
Mystery surrounds the reasoning for the sudden abandonment of the people of this area. Warfare, overpopulation, or even a 23 year-long drought beginning in A.D. 1276 may have been the cause.