The boundary-line which divides Utah from Arizona divides the most gorgeous expression of the great American desert region. From the Mesa Verde National Park on the east to Zion National Monument on the west, from the Natural Bridges on the north to the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert on the south, the country glows with golden sands and crimson mesas, a wilderness of amazing and impossible contours and indescribable charm.
Within this region, in the extreme north of Arizona, lie the ruins of three neighboring pueblos. Richard Wetherill, who was one of the discoverers of the famous cliff-cities of the Mesa Verde, was one of the party which found the Keet Seel (Broken Pottery) ruin in 1894 within a long crescent-shaped cave in the side of a glowing red sandstone cliff; in 1908, upon information given by a Navajo Indian, John Wetherill.
Keet Seel, with over 160 rooms including six kivas, is the largest cliff dwelling in Arizona.
Professor Byron Cumming, and Neil Judd located Betatakin (Hillside House) ruin within a crescent-shaped cavity in the side of a small red canyon.
Betatakin Ruin has 135 rooms including living quarters, granaries and one kiva.
Twenty miles west of Betatakin is a small ruin known as Inscription House upon whose walls is a carved inscription supposed to have been made by Spanish explorers who visited them in 1661.
INSCRIPTION HOUSE – photograph by William B. Douglas – 1903
Inscription House, the smallest of the three, has 44 rooms, several granaries and one kiva. (Inscription House is closed to the public.)
The pueblos were vacated in the 1300s, probably due to erosion which depleted the soil in the canyon floor and lowered the water table
While these ruins show no features materially differing from those of hundreds of other more accessible pueblo ruins, they possess quite extraordinary beauty because of their romantic location in cliffs of striking color in a region of mysterious charm.
But the Indian civilization of our southwest began very many centuries before the arrival of the Spaniard, who found, besides the innumerable pueblos which were crowded with busy occupants, hundreds of pueblos which had been deserted by their builders, some of them for centuries, and which lay even then in ruins.
The desertion of so many pueblos with abundant pottery and other evidences of active living is one of the mysteries of this prehistoric civilization.
No doubt, with the failure of water-supplies and other changing physical conditions, occasionally communities sought better living in other localities, but it is certain that many of these desertions resulted from the raids of the wandering predatory tribes of the plains, the Querechos of Bandelier’s records, but usually mentioned by him and others by the modern name of Apaches.
These fierce bands continually sought to possess themselves of the stores of food and clothing to be found in the prosperous pueblos. The utmost cruelties of the Spanish invaders who, after all, were ruthless only in pursuit of gold, and, when this was lacking, tolerant and even kindly in their treatment of the natives, were nothing compared to the atrocities of these Apache Indians, who gloried in conquest.
Of the ruins of pueblos which were not identified with Spanish occupation, six have been conserved as national monuments.
Navajo National Monument, is run by the National Park Service,
Summer hours: From May 27, 2012 to September 08, 2012.
The visitor center is open 8 A.M. to 5:30 P.M.
Winter hours: From September 09, 2012 and ends May 25, 2013.
The visitor center is open 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. every day.
Fees & Reservations
Free guided hikes to cliff dwellings.
Free self-guided trails on mesa top (3 of them).
Free campgrounds (48 sites total).
Free movies (3 of them!)
Source: National Park Service
