Discoveries...America National Parks: New Mexico Ancestral Pueblo People & Fort Union

This latest entry in Jim and Kelly Watt’s acclaimed high-def series on America’s national parks focuses on the remains of ancient structures once inhabited by ancestral Puebloan peoples—habitats and other spaces that served many generations over centuries. First up is Chaco Culture National Historical Park, a huge concentration of 10th-to-12th-century pueblos located in a remote canyon in Northwestern New Mexico. Featuring the single largest number of pre-Columbian antiquities and ancient ruins among all southwestern parks, Chaco Park includes ruins of multiple complexes for living and cultural purposes (as well as astronomy). Nearby Aztec Ruins National Monument features scores of medieval-era dwellings carved out of caves in a steep volcanic ash wall (spaces that are still accessible by ladder). Bandelier National Monument also contains cliff dwellings, although these came much later for Puebloan people (up through the 17th century). The area’s large expanse housed multitudes and the rising elevation—up to a mile—meant different kinds of environments for inhabitants. El Morro National Monument honors a pueblo that housed 1,000 people; once a farming community with water below a mesa, El Morro is remarkable for both its ancestral petroglyphs and Spanish inscriptions on rocks. Also visited is Fort Union National Monument, where adobe remains of a 19th-century town on the Santa Fe Trail reveals a once-thriving hub for hundreds of traveling wagons. Another fine armchair travelogue that will appeal to vacationers and history buffs, this is highly recommended. Aud: P. (T. Keogh)