Paul & Tara Visit the National Parks: Hovenweep National Monument

Visited: May 2017

Nearby town: Bluff, UT; Blanding, UT

In a desolate, windswept, and isolated corner of southeastern Utah, lies a hauntingly beautiful complex of ruins overlooking a lonely canyon.

Hovenweep (which means "deserted valley" in the Ute language) National Monument preserves and protects a number of Ancestral Puebloan villages scattered in Utah (and also some just across the border in Colorado).

I didn't know much about Hovenweep before our trip, but we were in the Four Corners area and decided to go a little out of our way to visit. I'm so glad we did. I was blown away by the ruins. They are very impressive, and I must admit they're also kind of spooky and eerie. This is an awesome setting, and is well worth a visit.

Evidence indicates that hunter-gatherers lived in this canyon as long as 10,000 years ago. The ruins you see in the monument were built by the Ancestral Puebloan around 1100 - 1300 AD. The Ancestral Puebloans also built the structures at nearby Mesa Verde National Park and Aztec Ruins National Monument.

The Ancestral Puebloans abandoned these villages around the end of the 13th century. It's not entirely known why they left, but it was probably a sustained drought. Evidence suggests that they moved further south, to the Rio Grande in present-day New Mexico, or the Gila River in Arizona.

The villages sat abandoned for hundreds and hundreds of years. In 1854, William D. Huntington, a Mormon missionary, discovered the ruins at Hovenweep. His Ute and Navajo guides knew about the ruins, and believed they were haunted, and urged Huntington to stay away. As interest grew in these mysterious and awe-inspiring ruins, Hovenweep National Monument was created on March 2, 1923.

There are six (6) groups of ruins that one can visit: Square Tower, Cajon, Cutthroat Castle, Goodman Point, Holly Group, and Hackberry and Horseshoe Group. The most extensive, most visited, and most accessible is the Square Tower Group. The other 5 can be accessed either by hiking trail, or by roads, but the roads are not well-maintained and require all-wheel drive and high clearance, etc.

We only visited the Square Tower, but that alone is worth the trip. As always, the first stop is the Visitor Center to learn all about the ruins and the people who lived there. Then take the loop trail (it's about 2 miles) to explore. We pretty much had the place to ourselves. That made it very special.

The first prominent structure on the loop trail are The Twin Towers on the opposite side of the canyon. I really liked this ruin. Very neat and unique.

At its peak, Hovenweep was home to about 500 people. The buildings here served a variety of purposes: tool and grinding work areas, kivas for spiritual and ritual functions, residential rooms, and storage. Crops grown here included maize (corn), amaranth, beans, squash, and cotton.

this "covered" house built into the rock was very cool and unique

Little Ruin Canyon

The trail offers spectacular views of Sleeping Ute Mountain, which looms on the horizon.

Now comes the largest building in the group: Hovenweep Castle. The slots and doors of the Castle act as a solar calendar. The building is aligned so that light channels through those openings in predictable and distinct patterns at sunset on summer and winter solstice, as well as vernal and autumnal equinox.