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Here you’ll find the park’s visitor center, campground, and main park unit. We recommend you start your visit here – grabbing a park map, refilling your water, and stretching your legs on the Square Tower loop trail. Access from nearby towns and highways is paved to the Square Tower Group.
Hovenweep Castle and Hovenweep House perched above Square Tower, the unit's namesake.
NPS photo
Although there are signs at each major intersection for Hovenweep, we still recommend having written directions for your visit.
NPS photo
Getting There
We recommend using a paper map and good directions to find your way. If you must use GPS, try entering in "Hovenweep National Monument Visitor Center." If your GPS is taking you on unpaved roads (besides small, 0.25-mile sections of gravel), then you may be going the wrong way. Driving time from the nearby towns of Bluff and Blanding, UT, and Cortez, CO, is about one hour.
Restrooms, water, trash receptacles, and picnic tables are available at the visitor center. Similar amenities are available at the campground, just 0.25 miles down the park road from the visitor center.
On July 1, 2014, Hovenweep became the seventeenth International Dark Sky Park. Hovenweep is the first dark sky park to span two states.
The Square Tower Group Community
This unit contains the largest collection of ancestral Puebloan structures at Hovenweep. The remains of nearly thirty kivas (subterranean circular rooms, often with spiritual significance) have been discovered on the slopes of Little Ruin Canyon. A variety of other structures, from room blocks to towers to complexes, are perched on the canyon rims, balanced on boulders, and tucked under ledges. Most of the structures were built and used between 1200 and 1300 CE (common era).
Square Tower is perched at the head of the canyon, just below Hovenweep House (pictured) and Hovenweep Castle.
NPS photo
What’s in a Name?
The group is named for Square Tower, a three-story structure built on a boulder at the head of Little Ruin Canyon. The masonry has a slight spiral shape, which may have been an aesthetic choice or made the tower stronger.
The canyon that houses the Square Tower Group is called Little Ruin Canyon. Archeologists gave the canyon its name, but the descendants of the people who built Hovenweep do not view these structures as ruins. For today's Pueblo, Zuni, and Hopi people, Hovenweep is a piece of sacred evidence, or footprint, from their ancestors. These ancestors left innumerable footprints over thousands of years on their journey to the places where their descendants live today. Native people still return to Hovenweep to pray and visit the spirits of their ancestors. This space is not abandoned, confined to the past, or ruined. Like many of the names at Hovenweep, Little Ruin Canyon is not incorrect, but it reflects an outsider's observation instead of the actual experience of the people who built this place and their descendants.
Life at Square Tower
Ancestral Puebloan culture depended heavily on farming, just as modern Pueblo culture does today. Intense drought in the 1200s CE made the Pueblo way of life very difficult. The complexes at Hovenweep were built during these droughts, and tribal consultants from some descendant communities suggest they were places to pray for rain. Square Tower Group has several features that tribal consultants believe were used in ceremony, including springs, towers, and timekeeping features.
Even if you cannot see the spring at the head of the canyon, you can probably spot the hackberry trees that signal the presence of water. Springs may have been important sites for the ancestral Pueblo people to direct their prayers toward the sea. The slopes and peaks of mountains help form rain clouds in this region. Towers on the rim of this canyon offer a clear line of sight to the mountains nearby. Tribal consultants suggest the towers were a good place to send prayers toward the peaks for rain. Specially aligned details, like portholes in the sides of some towers, may have allowed trained timekeepers to track the seasons and conduct ceremonies to call the rain at the correct time in the climate cycle.
As the name suggests, Eroded Boulder House was built inside a natural alcove in a boulder.
NPS/Stephen Bridgehouse
Migration
Despite the impressive construction at Hovenweep and the meticulous work of religious leaders to pray for rain, drought continued. Other changes made life less appealing here in the Four Corners region, like the arrival of new groups that strained natural resources. At the same time, vibrant communities grew on the Hopi Mesas, in the Little Colorado River Basin, and along the Rio Grande. For all of these reasons, generations of Pueblo people continued their tradition of migration and built new permanent homes south of Hovenweep. Today, many Zuni, Hopi, and Pueblo people live in New Mexico and Arizona.
Part of the Park
The Square Tower Group unit was included in the 1923 Presidential proclamation that designated Hovenweep as a national monument.
Printable Publications
Download and print the Little Ruin Trail Guide for more information. These trailguides are also available at the visitor center.
