May 2019

POTD: Not So Ancient Steps

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Not So Ancient Steps
El Morro National Monument, New Mexico
2019

While not nearly as old as the steps in yesterday’s POTD, these still certainly qualify as historical features. They were built by the CCC in the 1930s and are part of a trail leading up to the top of El Morro (The Headland), a.k.a A’ts’ina (Place of writings on the rock) to the Zuni, a.k.a. Inscription Rock to early Anglo-Americans. As the later names imply, there are many historical inscriptions around the base of the large sandstone mesa put there by early Anglo explorers and travelers as well as petroglyphs by the much earlier Ancestral Puebloan people who lived in a 875 room pueblo on top of the mesa, the ruins of which are still there.

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POTD: Ancient Steps

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Ancient Steps
Chaco Canyon, New Mexico
2019

This is the Jackson Staircase, named after photographer William Henry Jackson who did not build them but rather “discovered” them in 1877. (Discovered in quotes here because it was a discovery of sorts for Anglos. Other local people obviously knew about them.)

The stairs were built by the Chaco Puebloan culture about 1,000 years ago. There were dozens of great houses (large, multiple story pueblo buildings) in Chaco Canyon and they were connected by an impressive network of roads to more than 150 other great houses in the region. The Jackson Staircase is part of one of those roads. Least you should think the entire road system was as primitive as this staircase looks, that was not really the case. There were at least eight major roads as much as 30 feet wide covering more than 180 miles. Much of the road system was flat or ramped and otherwise improved to a amazing degree. There were way stations of various sorts built along the way as well as low masonry walls that some say may have functioned as a type of curbing.

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