by Kathryn Retzler

They lived here a millennium ago and left a mysterious legacy we are still trying to decipher. The Ancestral Puebloans, or Anasazi, inhabited much of the Four Corners area, living first in crude pit houses and later in sophisticated pueblo-style communities. These innovative people developed extensive trade routes, complex irrigation systems and a means of communication through petroglyphs and pictographs chiseled into and painted onto rock surfaces, a sort of "rock newspaper" for future generations to study. To follow their trail could take more than a lifetime, but the visitor with a little less time to spend might at least hit some of the highlights.

Mesa Verde, a World Heritage Site situated between Cortez and Durango, features cliff dwellings, cliff-top pit houses, museums, interpretive and interactive exhibits. Lodging, dining and gift shops are available. Hovenweep National Monument's unique multi-story towers perched on canyon rims and balanced on boulders are hauntingly beautiful at sunset and sunrise. Hovenweep straddles the border of Utah and Colorado. Anasazi Heritage Center in Dolores offers two ancestral sites and an excellent interpretive museum. Navajo National Monument high on the Shonto Plateau, overlooking the Tsegi Canyon system in the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona, preserves three of the most intact cliff dwellings of the Ancestral Puebloans. Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Chinle Ariz., dates from A.D. 350 and 1300, although Navajos still live and farm here. Nearby, Window Rock, Ariz., is the capital of the Navajo Nation and the center of its tribal government with an excellent museum and annual fairs and celebrations well worth visiting. In New Mexico, near Nageezi, Chaco Culture National Historical Park contains thirteen major archaeological sites including kivas and multi-story dwellings. At Bloomfield, NM, stop at Salmon Ruins and its museum and 11th Century pueblo, then continue on to the Aztec Ruins (mistakenly named for Mexico's Aztecs), just south of Durango. Both were actually built by a people thought to be closely related to the Chacoan culture, and were later occupied by a community with close ties to Mesa Verde.