Trail of the Ancients - Lowry Pueblo, Dolores, CO
Posted by: 
94RedRover
N 37° 35.084 W 108° 55.191
12S E 683667 N 4161775
Stop 1 of Day 2 on the Trail of the Ancients Scenic Byway, the Lowry Pueblo Ruins are evidence of a vast ancestral Indian village.
Waymark Code: WM6HVG
Location: Colorado, United States
Date Posted: 06/07/2009
Views: 3
Off of Route 491 in Pleasant View, onto County Road CC, visitors can reach the Lowry Pueblo Ruins, part of the Canyons of the Ancients. This Ancestral Puebloan village was constructed around AD 1060 and inhabited for about 165 years. As with many of these villages, Lowry Pueblo consisted of a few rooms and a kiva (similar to a "family" room or ceremonial area) but grew to 40 rooms and eight kivas and a Great Kiva between AD 1085 and 1170.
The Lowry Great Kiva is 47 feet in diameter! It is one of the largest known kivas found in this area, and certainly the largest one that we visited on our trip. Construction started around AD 1086, and was probably more than the center of the village's families, but may have acted as a community center for villages from several hundred square miles to trade, exchange news and conduct religious ceremonies.
Lowry Pueblo was named for George Lowry, a homesteader that discovered it. It was excavated in the 1930's and became a hitorical landmark in 1967. The Bureau of Land Management has done only a little to the masonry to maintain the structure, and now a portion of the village is under a roof structure to protect it further from the weather.
Access to this site is off a maintained dirt and gravel road that passes through farmland. As you drive through these green fields, think about how many centuries these lands were farmed by the ancestral puebloan people...
Program: America's Byways
Website: [Web Link]
Official Name: Trail of the Ancients
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