Deserted Valley

One of the challenges of our late June trip to the west amid a global pandemic was socially distancing from people on weekends. We mostly solved this problem on a Saturday by almost completely sequestering ourselves in a car on a five plus hour drive from Denver to Moab. On Sunday, we wanted to get to a spot outside of Moab where we were likely to see very, very few other people. After a little searching, we were ready to say "Hello!" to Hovenweep National Monument.

Never heard of it? Neither had I. I found it using the National Park Service's Find a Park webpage. I used that site to make a list of Park Service properties in the middle of nowhere where we would have a great chance of running into absolutely as few people as possible, and then culled the list down from there. Of all the candidates on my list, Hovenweep, which features unbelievably intact ruins of structures built by people living in this part of the planet almost a millennia ago, proved to be the most interesting. Plus, the visitation number from 2019 was down around 35,000 visitors for the entire year. Sounded like a great place to get away from crowds. 

The start of Little Ruin Trail.

One of the great historical mysteries of the pre-European American west is what happened to the Puebloan peoples (or what used to be referred to as the Anasazi) that lived around the four corners area where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and New Mexico meet up. According to studies on things as obscure as historical pollen records, there was a steady-ish population living in the area some 1,000 or so years ago. Around the year 1100, the population exploded. A couple of hundred years later, they were all gone.

There is no surviving written account (if there ever was one) of what happened in everyday life for people in the late 1200s in the area south and east of Moab, Utah, but the evidence of human habitation is there through surviving petroglyphs and some incredible, still-standing structures made from stone masonry. The most impressive of all these building projects is probably over at Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, which is totally reachable as a day trip from Moab. 

Under normal circumstances, Mesa Verde might have been a destination for us on this trip but three things worked against this idea: (1) Mesa Verde gets a heck of a lot more visitors than we'd have any chance of seeing at Hovenweep; (2) all the tours at Mesa Verde are guided, meaning you have to be in close proximity to other people; and (3) I'd already been there in 2001. This last one is probably the least important of the three. Hovenweep, which dates from about the year 1230, would have to do. And it did just fine. More than that, in fact.

Tower Point.

As a park experience, Hovenweep is spread across a number of sites in southeast Utah with varying degrees of accessibility and different numbers of intact buildings. Some of these units of the park will require hiking or the use of an off-road vehicle to get to in addition to walking in a very remote, rattlesnake-filled (allegedly) desert. The flagship Hovenweep experience can be found at the Square Tower Group right near the Visitor Center. This spot became the focus of our day.

The Square Tower Group is a collection of ten or so former buildings of various uses arranged on the rim of a canyon appropriately named Little Ruin Canyon. The buildings are connected by a mile and a half walking loop with an optional half mile supplemental trek to Tower Point at the end of the canyon. If you follow the guide you pick up near the Visitor Center, the path will take you by each of ruins and then back across the canyon itself. If you go counter-clockwise and follow the guide, you'll hit the descent and climb out of the canyon last. If want to tackle this first, go the other way.

You can get as up close and personal as common sense would suggest with these former buildings. There are few to no barriers or ropes other than signs advising you to stay away which matches the whole experience here. It's all low budget because you are literally in the middle of nowhere. The paths you walk along are defined simply by a line of rocks on the rock landscape. It's cost effective for sure but it's also about the least intrusive into the park's natural landscape as you could make it. 

As an experience, this may be superior to a guided tour at Mesa Verde on some levels. What's at Hovenweep is nowhere near as massive or spectacular, but the non-guided nature of the tour allows you to skip stuff you don't find that interesting or linger as long as you want in certain spots. All told, the two mile hike took us about an hour and 45 minutes. We definitely lingered in some spots.

Eroded Boulder House. Taking advantage of natural rocks to build a dwelling.

The buildings you walk past on the self-guided tour are all fairly simple. Most are rectangular or D-shaped in plan and feature walls that go straight up from their footprint. All have been assigned names that are made up by those folks that first came across them centuries after they were abandoned I guess. Some of the names make sense; others don't. Some of the buildings are fairly unremarkable (once you get beyond the fact that they are still upright 800 plus years after they were built) due to their form or remaining state; others aren't. In fact, some of these things are completely remarkable.

There are probably four buildings that were most impressive to me: the granary remains at Tower Point, Hovenweep Castle, Square Tower (for which the entire site is named); and Twin Towers.

The granary is sited on a finger of the mesa that juts into the canyon. It's probably the most scenic point on the site. If it were built today, it's property value would be enormous because of the view. It's got the best location! location! location! in the place. I'm guessing in an environment where daily survival was a struggle, things like views and vistas maybe didn't have so much value.

Just to the south of Tower Point sits Hovenweep Castle (the cover photo of this post) and Square Tower (the namesake of this portion of the park). The Castle likely had nothing to do with a fortress of any sort. I assume it picked up that name based on its resemblance to a medieval structure but it was likely not used either for defensive purposes or to house a ruler of sorts. It's big and has several surviving pieces to it, which makes for some incredible views.

Look down into the canyon after you pass Hovenweep Castle you'll spy Square Tower, which has been built with a twist or in a slight spiral. It's the only building on the site which shows this kind of a construction method and so is interesting just for that reason alone. While the intent behind the spiral is unknown of course, it certainly might add some strength to the couple of stories high building. It's interesting to see that people were experimenting with this type of construction. It's also pretty interesting that it's the only structure built this way. Maybe it didn't catch on or something.

Square Tower (in Little Ruin Canyon) with Hovenweep House beyond.

But the crown jewel on the Little Ruin Trail is for sure the Twin Towers. These two sizable buildings are built super close to one another and the walls of the two structures that almost touch are built using gentle curves, which had to have ramped up the level of difficulty. They probably had to have been built simultaneously to get their walls this close and as plumb as they are.

Get closer up to these two and you'll be more impressed. I imagine most of the buildings constructed of the vintage of those at Hovenweep were laid stone upon mortar (which is probably just dried mud maybe?) followed by more stones and more mortar and on and on. The builders of the Twin Towers took their craft a step further by using small spacer rocks in between the larger stone pieces so that the joints have a uniform thickness to them. It must have taken a lot longer to build this way because you need to find or craft two or three spacer rocks between every layer instead of just slopping a coating of mud to a close enough thickness.

The trail guide we used to walk the site described the Twin Towers as "among the most carefully constructed buildings in the entire Southwest." When the work that you have done is described in these sorts of terms over an entire region of a continent, I think you've done a pretty good job. Can you imagine how the builders of these two structures (or any of those still around for that matter) would feel knowing that 800 or 900 years later what they poured their heart and soul and sum total of building skill into is still standing? And without really any preservation for the vast majority of that time. I'd say job well done here. The original wooden lintel over what I assume is the door is also still intact. I'd be pretty pleased with myself if I built something and it was still around in the year 2700 or so. This is some pretty crazy stuff!

The Twin Towers.

Check out the spacer blocks between the rows on masonry in the Twin Towers wall.

I loved our couple of hours at Hovenweep. I think one of the things I liked the best was that the experience is small enough that you can cover everything including examining the whole site in detail and still do it all in a part of a day. You can almost get a sense of what life might be like on a day in the late 1200s as people worked hard at tending crops of beans, squash and corn in what I can only assume was a much more fertile valley than it was when we were there.

In many ways this was like the trip we took to Herculaneum near Mount Vesuvius in Italy. That place was so full of detail and information but still small enough that you could take it in given just part of a day. I'm not really equating Hovenweep to Herculaneum; they are completely different experiences. But Hovenweep was completely understandable pretty quickly. We didn't have to leave thinking we needed to go back because we didn't get everything we wanted out of a visit. Sometimes there's a lot of value to doing this. I certainly felt that way here.

We did not spend much time in the other units of the park. We drove out to the Horseshoe and Hackberry section to the east of Square Tower Group but decided based on our quick look out through the brush that we were probably not going to add substantially to our experience by making the hike out in the middle of the desert alone to those two ruins. I think we felt fulfilled enough by our time at Little Ruin Canyon.

It was also refreshing to see something manmade on this trip that meant something. I love spending time in nature but all nature and no human history can get a little repetitive, no matter how gorgeous and varied the landscapes we visited were. Maybe it's the architect in me that wants to spend just a little time around old buildings while traveling.

Climbing out of Little Ruin Canyon at the end of the hike.

So about that isolation. It's pretty out there. We got on the road early (figured we'd beat the crowds if there were actually any) and got to Hovenweep at about 10 a.m. We drove through the desert. We drove over gravel roads. We lost cell service. We followed signs that seemed contradictory to the maps we had. We made it.

The name Hovenweep means "deserted valley" in the Ute / Paiute language. That name works on a couple of levels. Little Ruin Valley was at one time deserted by the people who lived there and it's also pretty darned deserted today. We did find a couple of cars in the Visitor Center parking lot when we arrived. While out on the trail, we passed five people and a dog. That's it. Pretty isolated and easy to social distance. 

The wide open space and almost complete lack of other humans also let us take in a quiet sunny day in the American desert. Standing still at Hovenweep got us complete isolation in nature. There were crows cawing and maybe some flies buzzing and some noise in the vegetation if the wind kicked up a bit but other than that it was completely silent. If there were lizards scampering about (and there were) they added nothing to the sound of the desert. It's rare these days that I get to a spot where I get this kind of experience.

Another view of Hovenweep Castle.

Before we started our trek, we stopped at the closed Visitor Center to read a little about the place and its history. A few notes here. First, beware of rattlesnakes. Yikes! Isolation sounded good until you started talking about rattlesnakes. We didn't see any. We checked with four of the five people we passed to see if they saw any and they were all negative too.

We also found out what likely happened to the Puebloan people who called this place home all those centuries ago. Apparently there was some sort of prolonged drought sometime around the year 1270 which caused an exodus. Makes sense; you can't live without water. The people who make up the Hopi, Zuni and Rio Grande Pueblo tribes are thought to be the descendants of the settlers around the four corners that built the structures at Hovenweep and other sites nearby. 

Finally, just before you head out on the Little Ruin Canyon trail, there's a sign that recommends itineraries for those with limited time. I know you've probably seen signs like this before. You know..."If you have one hour..." or "If you have two hours..." Something like that. Only this sign starts out at 15 minutes. Who is going to go all the way out to this spot in the middle of the Utah desert to spend 15 minutes?!?!?! I don't see it. We ignored the sign and ventured forth. We did the whole thing. Don't go for 15 minutes. Do it all. Spend time looking and studying. Take it all in.

Fortunately...no!

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How We Did It

Hovenweep National Monument is open every day of the year. Trails are open sunrise to sunset, which is pretty much all you need to know. Trail guides are available outside the Visitor Center.

We drove to Hovenweep from Moab south down US-191 and then took roads off that route to the east. As mentioned above, we lost cell service (and therefore Google Maps and other navigation aids) on the trip there. Keep an eye out for the signs if you do and follow them. It worked for us.

There are a couple of stops worth making on the way to or from Hovenweep. We stopped on the way there at Newspaper Rock, a giant petroglyph wall created by indigenous peoples and then added to / vandalized by later visiting Europeans. It's on the road to The Needles section of Canyonlands National Park. On the way back, we stopped at Needles Overlook, which gives you a terrific vista over most of the eastern part of Canyonlands. If you don't feel like driving to Hovenweep without seeing anything else, these two spots were worth it to us.

We drove back to Moab through Colorado. Given the fact that we weren't confident we could backtrack effectively and Waze said that was the way to go, we decided we'd give it a shot. If you do this, be prepared for lots of gravel roads which means plenty and plenty of slow driving. It got us home, but I'm not a fan of driving on gravel.

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