Chimney Rock, Colorado

Chimney Rock was hot.  That was my first impression of it, hot.  My second impression of it was terrifying.  Before touring the ancestral Puebloan village we had to sign a waiver saying that if you hurt yourself, the National Forest Service was not responsible.  People only make you sign things like that if there is a danger of being hurt or killed!  Right next to Chimney Rock there is a slightly larger rock called Companion Rock, together they create a set of pillars. 

Pit House

First our guide took us on a quarter mile interpretive trail around what used to be the village.  We saw a pit house that hadn’t been excavated and a pit house that they had completely excavated, so we could see what it looked like inside.  After that we started up the trail to Chimney Rock.  On the way up our guide told us about the Choya Cactus, also known as the Jumping Cactus. This prickly plant rolls into the path and sticks to your shoe then leaps up and stings you in the back of the leg.  I actually saw one that had rolled in the path since we had gone up, but that happened a lot later.

When we got to Chimney Rock we saw another small village complex that was still mostly intact.  It was a brick work held together by mud and ash.  Inside there were several storage rooms and two Kivas.  A Kiva is a place where people would gather for religious ceremonies and sleep at night when it got cold.  Since the walls are made of stone and it used to have a thick roof, the Kivas would hold heat very well.  There were holes in the top of the roofs for smoke, and ventilation shafts to circulate air.  Fun fact: all of the ventilation shafts pointed south because that is the way the wind would come from most often.

Most of the Pueblo peoples’ clothes were made out of a plant called the yucca.  The yucca has long fibrous leaves that they made everything from loincloths to diapers out of.  Just imagine how uncomfortable a yucca diaper would feel!

Chimney Rock itself had as much significance to the Pueblo people as the yucca that they made their clothes out of and the animals they hunted.  On the spring and fall equinoxes the sun would rise in between the rocks, signaling that the planting season would either begin or end.  When the Pueblo people noticed this they gouged a hole that lined up directly with where the sun would rise, then they built corresponding points much further south that all lined up. In addition every 18.6 years all the full moons for 3 years straight would rise in between the rocks.  This had more of a spiritual use than a practical use we think, but since the Pueblo never had a written language we don’t know.  After all one of the first things our tour guide said to us was, “As you can all see I’m an archaeologist.  That means if we don’t know something we make it up.”