Crow Canyon Pueblitos

Crow canyon is deep with very steep sides making it easy to defend. This undoubtedly contributed to its popularly. There are many ruins in the canyon and the immediate area. The largest ruin contains a pueblito and the remains of several hogans. It also bears the name of the canyon.

The most outstanding remains of the Crow Canyon Pueblito sits high on a rock approximately 250 feet up from the bottom of the canyon on a small shelf. There are signs of several more rooms located on the ground and adjacent to the rock.

This location provided an excellent view of the canyon floor all the way to the mouth of the canyon. There remains a lot of rubble in and about the ruin, a result of erosion. This site was included in the archaeological stabilization project in 1975 and has been entered into the National Register of Historic Places.

Another site I discovered while exploring the are can barley be seen from the floor of the canyon. If you look very closely you will notice the cliff dwelling near the center of the picture. reaching this site from the bottom is quite a climb, so I decided to approach from the top...

It takes about an hour to drive around to the top of the canyon. It turns out that approach from the top is impossible. The site this picture was taken from is on a very precarious overhang.

The ruin only has one wall remaining of what was a very small room, probably not much more than about 1 meter by 2 meters and maybe 1 1/2 meter high. As I creep a little closer to the edge of eternity I'm able to see a ladder that could be used to enter the site from the bottom :(

Also, long before the Dinetah arrived in the area, the Hisatsinom established residence in the canyon. The rock art in the area is actually from both the Dinetah and the Hisatsinom. This site is located at the mouth of the canyon where water and farm land was more important than protection from the enemies (if there were any).

This badly eroded ruin is at the bottom of Crow Canyon. All that is left are the remains of one wall and some rubble that may of at once been part of the roof. There are several Petroglyphs on the rock walls in the immediate area.

Crow Canyon Rock Art in the area
Link to the BLM information on Crow Canyon
Return to the Ruins Directory

E-mail: ron@neartime.com