Hovenweep National Monument is located on land in southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah, between Cortez, Colorado and Blanding, Utah on the Cajon Mesa of the Great Sage Plain. Shallow tributaries run through the wide and deep canyons into the San Juan River. Although Hovenweep National Monument is largely known for the six groups of Ancestral Puebloan villages and its kiva, there is evidence of occupation by hunter-gatherers from 8,000 to 6,000 B.C. until about AD 200. Later, a succession of early puebloan cultures settled in the area and remained until the 14th century. Hovenweep became a National Monument in 1923 and is administered by the National Park Service. In July 2014, the International Dark-Sky Association designated Hovenweep an International Dark Sky Park.

History

Early people

Evidence from the area indicates that there were Paleo-Indians and people of the Archaic period. During the transitional period from a traditional hunter-gatherer society to pueblo people, there were several distinct cultural changes: Early hunters Late Basketmaker II Era AD 50 to 500 Basketmaker III Era 500 to 750 Pueblo I Era 750 to 900

Ancient Puebloan people

Pueblo II Era – 900–1150 Pueblo III Era – 1150–1350 Six clusters of pueblo buildings Agriculture Natural resources Migration from Hovenweep

Discovery

In 1854, William D. Huntington, on a missionary trip to the southwestern United States for Brigham Young, discovered the ruins of the present Hovenweep National Monument. The ruins were already known to the Ute and Navajo guides who considered them haunted and urged Huntington to stay away. The name Hovenweep, which means "deserted valley" in the Ute language, was adopted by pioneer photographer William Henry Jackson and William Henry Holmes in 1878. The name is apt as a description of the area's desolate canyons and barren mesas as well as the ruins of ancient communities. Concerned about the vandalism at the prehistoric ruins of the San Juan watershed in the Four Corner states, in 1903 T. Mitchell Pruden surveyed the ruins in those states and reported the following regarding the Hovenweep area: "Few of the mounds have escaped the hands of the destroyer. Cattlemen, ranchmen, rural picnickers, and professional collectors have turned the ground well over and have taken out much pottery, breaking more, and strewing the ground with many crumbling bones." In 1917–18, ethnologist J. Walter Fewkes of the Smithsonian Institution included descriptions of the ruins in published archaeological survey reports, and recommended the structures be protected. Little archaeological excavation was done on sites until the 1970s.

National monument

President Warren G. Harding proclaimed Hovenweep a National Monument on March 2, 1923, which is administered by the National Park Service. On October 15, 1966 the National Monument was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In addition to the ruins, located in the Hovenweep National Monument are:

Climate

Hovenweep National Monument has a cold semi-arid climate (Köppen: BSk) with cold winters and hot summers.