Outliers

Kin Klizhin

As its name implies, Chaco Culture National Historical Park includes more than just Chaco Canyon. While Chacoan Culture was centered within the canyon with its spectacular great houses and dense concentration of monumental architecture, Chacoan influence extended much further, throughout the San Juan Basin and even a bit beyond. The whole region contains outlying great houses, which show many of the same features as the great houses in Chaco Canyon (core-and-veneer masonry, large-scale planning, exaggerated size relative to other buildings in the immediate area), though generally on a smaller scale. These outlying great houses, and the great kivas and communities of small-house sites, with which they are usually associated, show clear evidence of the spread of the Chacoan system throughout a remarkably wide area.

Four of the outlying great houses are contained within the park itself. Though not part of the main unit of the park, they are open to the public and information about getting to them is available at the park visitor center. You can download a map (81/2 X 11 153kb pdf) to the outliers here. (To get the Free Adobe Reader, which is required to read the pdf files, click here.)

The four are:

• Kin Klizhin ("black house"); famous for its impressive tower kiva, located along a wash that empties into the Chaco River just west of the park boundary. You can download a brochure on Kin Klizhin here (81/2 X 14 187kb pdf).
• Pueblo Pintado ("painted town"); perched on an impressive promontory overlooking the Chaco Wash 15 miles upstream from the main park units, near the modern Navajo community of Pueblo Pintado, New Mexico. You can download a brochure on Pueblo Pintado here (81/2 X 14 133kb pdf).
• Kin Bineola ("house in which the wind whirls"); a relatively early but very large site to the southwest of the canyon near Lake Valley, New Mexico. You can download a brochure on Kin Bineola here (81/2 X 14 140kb pdf).
• Kin Ya'a ("towering house"); known and named for its tower kiva, located in a very visible location south of the park, near Crownpoint, New Mexico. You can download a brochure on Kin Ya'a here (81/2 X 14 208kb pdf).

In addition to the outliers included within the park, there are several other outlying great houses that are open to the public. Some of these are at other National Park Service units, while others are owned and protected by other entities. They include:

• Aztec Ruins National Monument (National Park Service) in Aztec, NM.
• White House at Canyon de Chelly National Monument (National Park Service) near Chinle, AZ.
• Far View House at Mesa Verde National Park (National Park Service) near Cortez, CO.
• Salmon Ruin (San Juan County) in Bloomfield, NM.
• Casamero Pueblo (Bureau of Land Management) near Gallup and Grants. NM.
• The Dittert Site at El Malpais National Conservation Area (Bureau of Land Management) near Grants. NM.
• Twin Angels Pueblo (Bureau of Land Management) near Bloomfield, NM
• Lowry Pueblo and Escalante Pueblo at Canyons of the Ancients National Monument (Bureau of Land Management) near Cortez, CO.
• Chimney Rock National Historic Site in San Juan National Forest (US Forest Service) near Pagosa Springs, CO.
• Edge of the Cedars State Park (Utah State Parks) in Blanding, UT

For information on visiting any of these sites, please contact the agency listed in parentheses.

 

Pueblo Pintado

 

Kin Bineola

Joe Kennedy