Chimney Rock is not for everyone. The walk to the top may challenge out-of-shape visitors, and the tours are small, casual and not highly choreographed. But the smaller scale offers a degree of intimacy not found at the big guys.
Scoping the heavens
The 4,100-acre Chimney Rock Archeological Area lies 20 miles west of Pagosa Springs in southwestern Colorado’s San Juan National Forest. Here, conifers cloak the slopes, creeks worthy of Coors labels tumble down hillsides, and trout-fi lled rivers meander through mead- ow-lined valleys. Barry Wheeless and other volunteers lead
2½-hour tours of Chimney Rock. We meet at the visitor cabin, a short drive off Colorado 151. Inside I fi nd interpretative displays as well as a selection of books and gifts to buy. On a shelf sits a stuffed rattlesnake, which looks so cute with its forked tongue and tiny fangs sticking out. I think of the devilish fun I could have with one of these at home. From the cabin, we drive up a gravel road to
a parking lot near the ruins. Barry emphasizes that the site is protected by federal law, and it’s
Ceremonial stone basin dug into the sandstone along the Great Kiva Trail.
illegal to pick up, tamper with or destroy any- thing out here. “We don’t even kill rattlesnakes. We just
shove them out of the way,” he assures me. The souvenir serpent at the cabin now has site sig- nifi cance.
Solstice viewing
We start down the paved Great Kiva trail, one of the site’s two pathways. Barry explains that Chimney Rock’s fi rst inhabitants arrived from Mexico around A.D. 900-950, but most of what we see today came later. The lower Pit House was built in 1078 according to tree-ring den- drochronology. It’s one of four structures that have been excavated and stabilized. We stop at the second excavated edifi ce, a round-walled enclosure known as the Great Kiva. Most of these ceremonial structures were dug into the ground, but since this one lies directly on bed- rock, they built it upward. Leaving the paved trail, Barry leads me onto
a sandstone slab where the ancient inhabitants scooped a sink-sized hole into the rock. It’s called a stone basin, and until 20 years ago, its purpose was vaguely listed as “ceremonial.” “Astronomer J. McKim Malville didn’t have
anything to do one day,” Barry recounts, “so he came out, stood behind this hole and watched the sun come up. Lo and behold, from here the sun rose directly over the north wall of the Great House Pueblo on the ridge. It was June 21, the day of the summer solstice.” For people who needed to know when to
plant crops, the movement of the sun, moon and stars served as a calendar. Similar solstice sightlines have been found at Chaco Canyon, one of the capitals of the Ancestral Puebloan world. “There was an infl ux here of people from
Chaco Canyon starting about A.D. 1050,” Barry explains. “The Chacoans were the elite living at the very top of the mesa.” We cross the parking lot and begin to climb
up that way on the steep and rocky Pueblo Trail. Taking a breather, Barry points across
30 EnCompass July/August 2012
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