One U.S. National Park Where You Can See Ruins

We saw remnants of an ancient Pueblo community on our visit to the Petrified Forest National Park.

Throughout our travels, we’ve seen some ruins of ancient peoples. The remnants of communities and how they lived, hundreds or thousands of years ago, are always of interest to me, provoking thoughts I might never have had if I hadn’t visited the preserved site.

Such was the case in the fall of 2021 when we were making a loop of the National Parks in the Southwestern United States. Our last park on this trip was the Petrified Forest in Arizona.

While I expected to see trees turned to rock and visible layers of time and sedimentation in the landscape, I don’t think I was prepared to see buildings left from an ancient culture.

Growing up in New York State, we learned of the Pueblo people and their lives. But, since they did not exist near where we lived, I did not retain much of the information other than that the Pueblos were nomadic and made utilitarian pottery (source).

When we visited the Petrified Forest, I learned more about these ancient people. By the time the Pueblo arrived on the Puerto Pueblo near the Puerto River in northeast Arizona, they had evolved into a farming culture, living together in settlements. The ancestral pueblos had to move to ensure their survival after a period of drought had inflicted the southwestern part of the U.S. in the 1200s.

The village that was established in what now is the Petrified Forest National Park was just that, a farming community. The Puerto River ran near the village and was a guide for other travelers — so bartering and exchange of materials was also possible for this community.

The village housed roughly one hundred people, doubling in size at its height of existence.

I think that this brings up an important part of travel. While most of us travel for enjoyment and entertainment, it also provides valuable educational experiences.

The site at Puerto Pueblo taught me that this was a community that formed around the natural resources that were available during a time of transition and climate change. The Pueblo adapted. They learned to farm, had water from the river, and grew their families in this community, which was most certainly different than their ancestors.

They communicated not only with their speech but also by carving in the rocks that were nearby. You can visit Newspaper Rock and see some of the petroglyphs. Zoom in below and you can see several glyphs, including a bird carrying a human form.

As I looked at the ruins of this ancient Pueblo community, I imagined that their life was hard. The community was set in a vast plain, the river near but still distant if you needed to carry water. I imagine it got hot here in the summer, so growing crops, while possible, would be difficult at best.

The climate continued to change and by the late 1300s, the community had moved on to find more amenable surroundings, leaving only remnants of their place here at Puerto Pueblo (source).

Today, a train traverses the wide, flat landscape near the remains of this ancient village. It still seems like an uninhabitable place to live.

To read more about my visits to the communities of ancient people, you can reference the following article:

The Globetrotter’s May Challenge is on the ruins of the world. There are some other articles I’d recommend reading if you are traveling to learn! One is from Aaron Paulson on a site in Japan that carries haunting memories.

And Kerri Duncan offers some drop-dead gorgeous photos of Kotor in Montenegro when she visited the area spontaneously! Her post is definitely worth a read!

Thanks to the editors at Globetrotters who continue to offer monthly challenges as well as a wide variety of travel articles from writers around the world!

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