Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

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Glimpses of our National Monuments

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  • 12 OUR NATIONAL MONUMENTS ruin and a wealth of material gathered has been placed in the National Museum in Washington. Their expedition contemplates another year of exploration. Pueblo Bonito, which was only 1 of 18 villages in the Chaco Canyon, contained 800 rooms and 32 kivas, and covered 3 acres of ground. Dr. Neil Judd, the representative of the National Geographic Society conducting the excavations, characterizes Pueblo Bonito as the largest apartment house built anywhere in the world prior to about 1887, and estimates that at one time it housed 1,200 people. Recent excavations brought to light a four-strand turquoise necklace, containing over 2,500 beads, which is probably a thousand years old. The beads are splendidly matched in size and color. Chettro Kettle (rain pueblo) measures 440 by 250 feet. Its masonry is exceptionally good and consists of fine-grained grayish- yellow sandstone, broken into small tabular pieces laid in thin mortar. In places courses of heavier stone are laid parallel at intervals, giving an ornamental effect. On top of the mesa, about three-fourths of a mile north of Pueblo Bonito, are the ruins of Pueblo Alto (high village), consisting of two community houses, the smaller about 75 feet square. Hungo Pavi (crooked nose), 2 miles above Pueblo Bonito, is built on three sides of a court, a semicircular double wall inclosing the fourth side, the space between the two walls being divided into rooms. The main building is 309 feet long and each of the two wings 136 feet. Una Vida (one family house), about 2 miles southeast of Hungo Pavi, is L-shaped, the extremities of the two wings being connected by a semicircular wall. The ruin is badly demolished. Wijiji, 1 mile above Una Vida, is rectangular, 225 by 120 feet, built around three sides of a court, with no wall on the fourth. Casa Rinconada, south of Chettro Kettle, is an enormous double- walled kiva or ceremonial room, measuring 72 feet in diameter, the walls being 30 inches thick. The outer wall is 8 feet from the inner, the space between being divided into rooms. Tsin Kletzin is a similar structure on the mesa, a mile to the south. On the very brink of the arroyo or gully down which in flood season rush the waters of the Chaco River is the Pueblo del Arroyo, almost within a stone's throw of Bonito. Similar in character, it is 270 feet long and 135 feet wide, with 9 kivas. Kin Kletsoi (yellow house) is a small pueblo half a mile west of Bonito; another mile down is Casa Chiquita (little house). Penasco Blanco (white rock point), situated on a high mesa south of the arroyo 3 miles northwest of Pueblo Bonito, is one of the most
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Object’s are ‘parent’ level descriptions to ‘children’ items, (e.g. a book with pages).