8/20

Two trip day

Four Corners

& Canyon of the Ancients Visitor Center

The Four Corners Monument marks the only point in the United State shared by four states; Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

The monument also marks the boundary between two semi-autonomous Native American governments, the Navajo Nation and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Reservation.

The boundaries occurred just prior to the Civil War when the US Congress acted to form governments in the area to combat the spread of slavery to the region.

Their boundaries were designated along meridian and parallel lines.

At the monument, together, we simultaneously straddled the four states. 

 

 

 

 

Around the monument, local Navajo and Ute artisans sell souvenirs and food.

  We bought fry bread with powdered sugar that tasted deliciously similar to funnel cake.

On the drive back to Mesa Verde we saw a sign for Canyons of the Ancients visitor Center and decided to check it out. 

The visitor center, operated by the Bureau of Land Management, is a museum focusing on Ancestral Puebloan, Native American, and historic cultures in the Four Corners region. 

 

 

 

 

The museum features permanent exhibits on archaeology, local history and Native American cultures.

This is a full-sized replica of the kind of pit structure built by the Dolores Anasazi in the late 800s.  It was excavated in the summer of 1980.  Pit structures are pits that were dug into the native soil, then given finished walls and timbered roof and furnished with features such as central hearths and storage cists.  Most structures are believed to have been shared by one to several households.

Currently the museum offers a special exhibit entitled From Krakow to Castle Rock.

  The exhibition chronicles Jagiellonian University’s Archaeological investigations within Canyons of the Ancients National Monument including photos, artifacts and 3D models and reconstructions from the Polish archaeological project that has been conducted since 2011 in the Mesa Verde region.