We hung around in the morning getting caught up and started early afternoon to go to the Anasazi Heritage Center in Dolores, Colorado. A little over a mile up the road we stopped at a farm stand, the first one we had seen all summer. I bought a bunch of fresh veggies and we took them back to the motorhome so they wouldn't be sitting in a hot car all afternoon. Back on the road, we got stopped twice for some periods of time due to paving. Finally arriving at the Heritage Center, we watched the twenty-five minute film before exploring the museum and art gallery. The museum is full of artifacts from and information on the many, many pueblos found in this area with many hands on exhibits to learn about the Ancestral Puebloans (once called Anasazi) and what their lives were like. There was also a special exhibit on the mountain lion which addresses the growing issue of human encounters with the lions and an understanding of these predators.
There are two pueblos on the site named Escalante and Dominguez after two Spanish priests who explored the area in 1776. They left from Santa Fe looking for a route to California that did not include the Mohave Desert or the Grand Canyon thus establishing the Old Spanish Trail which runs through the four corner states.
The Heritage Center is also the headquarters for the Canyon of the Ancients National Monument which is a more than a hundred seventy thousand acre tract in southwest Colorado set aside to protect the thousands of archeological sites recorded in the monument. Lowry Pueblo that we visited the other day in located in the monument.
When we were finished at the Heritage Center, we drove south of Cortez to the Yucca House National Monument. It was a good thing we had stopped at the Anasazi Heritage Center to get a brochure on the Yucca House as we never would have found it. We drove eight tenths of a mile down a dirt road, turned right and drove another mile and a half through private property where we parked in a farmyard with barking dogs and had to cross their lawn under sprinklers to get to the gate for the national monument.
There are two pueblos on the site named Escalante and Dominguez after two Spanish priests who explored the area in 1776. They left from Santa Fe looking for a route to California that did not include the Mohave Desert or the Grand Canyon thus establishing the Old Spanish Trail which runs through the four corner states.
The Heritage Center is also the headquarters for the Canyon of the Ancients National Monument which is a more than a hundred seventy thousand acre tract in southwest Colorado set aside to protect the thousands of archeological sites recorded in the monument. Lowry Pueblo that we visited the other day in located in the monument.
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| Anasazi Heritage Center |
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| Partially Reconstructed Full-sized Pithouse |
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| Dominguez Pueblo |
When we were finished at the Heritage Center, we drove south of Cortez to the Yucca House National Monument. It was a good thing we had stopped at the Anasazi Heritage Center to get a brochure on the Yucca House as we never would have found it. We drove eight tenths of a mile down a dirt road, turned right and drove another mile and a half through private property where we parked in a farmyard with barking dogs and had to cross their lawn under sprinklers to get to the gate for the national monument.
Yucca House is one of the largest archeological sites in southwest Colorado and was an important community center for the Ancestral Puebloan people from A.D. 1150-1300. The site is mostly big piles of rubble with just one standing wall but the larger pile is estimated to have had six hundred rooms, a hundred kivas and a great kiva that served the entire community. A spring flows through the complex and there were lots of lilies growing in the damp earth nearby as well as grasses and other green vegetation. From the site we could look across the irrigated fields of alfalfa to the mesas of Mesa Verde National Park.
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| Fertile Fields and Mesa Verde |
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| Interesting Plant |
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| Only Standing Wall Remaining at Yucca House |
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| The Pueblo is in There Somewhere |
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| Vegetation Takes Over Among the Rubble |
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| Piles of Rubble |
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| Largest Complex |
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| Conceptual Look at Pueblo Community |
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| Red Ground Cover |
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| The Mesa Goes On Forever |
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| Pueblo Communities Were Located Near Water |
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| Lilies |
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| At the Second Gate |
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| The Long Dirt Driveway |
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| Vulture Sculpture |
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| Picking Out the Guts of the Car |
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