Canyons of the Ancients National Monument
National Monument, Proclaimed 2000 And Managed By The Bureau Of Land Management. Holds The Highest Known Density Of Archaeological Sites In The United States More Than Six Thousand Recorded Across 176,000 Acres, With Estimates Running Far Higher. · Dolores, Colorado
Canyons of the Ancients holds the highest known density of archaeological sites anywhere in the United States: more than six thousand recorded across 176,000 acres, with the real total estimated far higher - in places above a hundred sites per square mile. Almost none of it is developed. There are no ticket booths, very few signs and no tours; it is dirt roads, sagebrush and canyons in which Ancestral Puebloan villages, field houses, check dams and rock art sit largely as they were left. The two exceptions are Lowry Pueblo, a forty-room great house with a great kiva and a paved approach, and the Canyons of the Ancients Visitor Center and Museum near Dolores, which holds three million artefacts and two twelfth-century pueblos in its own grounds. Start there, because the monument itself explains nothing - there is no interpretation on the ground, and what reads to a visitor as empty sagebrush is dense with structure to anyone who knows how to look at it.
27501 Highway 184, Dolores, Colorado, 81323, United States
The monument is public land and is open at all times. The Canyons of the Ancients Visitor Center and Museum near Dolores keeps daytime hours, closes on major holidays and has reduced winter hours. Lowry Pueblo is reached by a road that is graded but unpaved for its last stretch and can be impassable when wet. MOST OF THE MONUMENT IS UNDEVELOPED, UNSIGNED AND REACHED BY DIRT ROADS - check conditions at the museum before driving further in.
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