Hovenweep

Another beautiful day in southern Utah and another National Monument preserving the Ancestral Puebloan ruins. The structures here date about the same as the Navajo Monument we visited earlier in the week, but are different in that they were built into canyon-heads instead of under a pre-existing cliff in a canyon.

Time and erosion have taken most of the buildings that were constructed on the sandstone leaving only those built on the more solid rock. When viewing the ruins, you need to use your imagination to fill in the lost buildings that would have connected these remaining structures, creating a small city network of rooftop paths and ladders from the canyon bottom up to the mesa rim.