Wupatki National Monument Things to Do

4 more images

Wukoki is readily accessible to modern Man, but it is easy to imagine yourself an ancient inhabitant of this remote fiefdom, isolated in a hostile land, alert for enemies, secure in this citadel of red stone, a world unto yourselves.

All the pueblos in Wupatki Monument are unique, varied in both setting and conception. For some reason, Wukoki is my very favorite of them all!

12 miles north of Flagstaff on U.S. 89 is the entrance to the loop drive from Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument to Wupatki National Monument. Wupatki is at the northern end of the loop. You could drive north on 89 and start the loop at Wupatki, but something tells me that would be anticlimatic and not nearly as wonderful.

4 more images

Next to The Citadel site is this marker. The plaque reads: A Village
You are entering the “Citadel,” a ruin from the late 1100s. Research has not been completed so it is important that we leave things as they are. Will there be extra storage spaces found, possible evidence for the defense theory? We do know this is one of the larger pueblos in Wupatki National Monument and could have been the home for many families. You are welcome to speculate about what will be found here, as we do.

Abandonment
What happened? Exact reasons are hard to prove, but we know the climate here was variable, with good and bad times. Extended droughts effected many abandonments in the Southwest, probably including this one. By 1250 this area was abandoned and quiet. The families moved on in patterns we still don’t understand, but almost certainly descendants of the people who built these houses are among the Pueblo Indians living in the Southwest.

3 more images

Next to The Citadel site is this marker and it reads: Farming then did not mean vast fields like we use today. Anasazi and Sinagua people modified these small terraces to grow hand-tended corn, cotton, beans, and squash. We know the climate was about what it is now, very dry for farming. The terraces caught vital run-off from rain.

Behind you are rock circles that appear to be ruins of individual, separate rooms. These are common, but we do not know what they were used for.

3 more images

The plaque reads: Volcanic activity to the south produced giant fissures or earth cracks throughout the Wupatki area in the Kaibab Limestone. This formation covers most of the western half of Wupatki National Monument. The Sinagua and Anasazi Indians who inhabited these ancient pueblos probably found the earthcracks to be the most productive farming sites. There is no evidence of streams close by which could be used for water. All of the farming was dependent on the rainfall.

Corn, squash and other crops were planted along the canyon slopes and wash bottoms. Small check dams along the drainage courses provided level areas for farming. These flat areas retained more moisture and the accumulated slit enriched the soil. The bottom of Box Canyon, below the ruins, may have been an ideal area for farming.

Juniper, amaranth, yucca, Indian rice grass and other native plants were used as food, along with antelope, rabbit, squirrels, packrats and reptiles name a few.

4 more images

At each of the historic sites are plaques with educational information of the area. The plaque reads: Eight hundred years ago, a savannah-like grassland covered much of this high desert with abundant grasses. The residents would have collected and burned much of the nearby fuel, necessitating long walks to adjacent areas to gather wood. Sparse annual rainfall forced the inhabitants to catch and save as much water as they could, or walk miles to other sources.

Since the use of the area by modern ranchers, the land has undergone other dramatic changes. Cattle grazing stripped much of the native vegetation away, allowing other plants, such as rabbitbrush, saltbush and snakeweed to dominate the vegetation. Although Wupatki National Monument was established in 1924, grazing continued until 1989, ending with the completion of a fence around the monument boundary.

4 more images

The distant San Francisco Peaks would have looked much like they do today. To the east, however, Sunset Crater Volcano would still have been belching black smoke and cinders when the Sinagua and Anaszi lived here. The thick layer of cinders over the sandy soil helped hold moisture, which was beneficial to the growing of crops.

Eventually, even Sunset Crater Volcano grew quiet, and the winds blew the cinders away and dried out the soil.

Why the Lomaki residents departed is not certain. There are indications of disease affecting the population, or a lengthy drought creating a landscape barren of vegetation, animals and firewood. Or invading hostile tribes may have contributed to the abandonment of this area by the mid-1200s.

4 more images

Plaza
An open area in the pueblo near the rim of the earthcrack is known as the plaza. In pueblos, the plaza was the center for many daily activities including grinding corn, making pottery, working obsidian into arrowheads, processing other plants for food, and cooking. It would have also been used for meetings, conducting trade, and as a controlled play area for children. During the warmer months, the plaza received extensive use from dawn until after dusk; rooms inside the pueblo were used only for sleeping and some cooking.

Water At the bottom of the earthcrack is a prehistoric check dam that contained the frequent run-off. The inhabitants of the pueblo also placed numerous pottery jars at the base of overhangs to catch rainwater. When the rain did not come, they had to walk ten miles to the Little Colorado River drainage to fill their pottery jars.

4 more images

The Box Canyon ruins are typical of many pueblos found in this region. Early inhabitants constructed walls of nearby sandstone and limestone, and used local soils to cement the stones together. The flat roofs were built of timbers laid side-by-side, covered with smaller branches and finally plastered over with mud.

Smoke was vented from the rooms through a square hole in the ceiling, which frequently served as the only access to the room. Doorways were small and windows almost non-existent. As the rooms were abandoned, the timbers were often scavenged and used in other pueblos or burned as firewood, a precious commodity in this environment.

As you look at these ruins today, they appear just as they did when discovered in the late 1800s. The National Park Service has stabilized the walls to help preserve them. None are reconstructed. These 800-year-old walls are fragile and easily disturbed. Do Not walk or climb on them.