DKos Tour Series: Wupatki National Monument Archeological Ruins

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Location/Geography: In north central Arizona, Coconino County. Nearest settlement: Cameron; nearest city, Flagstaff. Area: 35,254 (50 square miles). Northeast of Sunset Crater/Bonito Lava Flow. Overlooks Painted Desert region and accentuated by numerous spatter cones.

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Spotlight: Once one of the largest pueblos in northern Arizona. Dominant and popular focal trading point for various tribal people); also occupied by different tribal groups over the years. Amazing backdrop of volcano country. Focus: human history, archeological ruins, dry farming and volcanoes.

Snapshot: Wupatki's ruins, as an overall setting, is some 2,000 feet lower than the volcanic region north of Flagstaff. Hence, the monument's desert scrub vegetation is quite different. The three-story Wupatki Pueblo was once home to many people at different times, and agriculture was vital to sustain them. The settlement is built on the edge of a small plateau with unobstructed views eastward toward the Painted Desert and the valley of the Little Colorado River, entering the Grand Canyon region just east of the canyon at Cameron (notably, the famous Trading Post), and not too far from Wupatki. All the rooms at the ruins are partially reconstructed. Less than eight hundred years ago, Wupatki was the largest pueblo throughout the region. It was also a relative newcomer for a constructed settlement on the outskirts of a broad desert terrain. Purportedly, this site had about one hundred rooms and between eighty and one hundred inhabitants during part of the 1100s. Wupatki flourished for a time as a dominant meeting place for different cultures living in the Southwest. It was also the warmest and driest place on the Colorado Plateau; however, water, food, even comfort were scarce. Wupatki was declared a national monument sometime during the 1930s.

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