Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico

In Chaco Canyon, a desert valley in northwestern New Mexico, between the early AD 900s and the late 1100s, the Anasazi created a civilization whose architecture, social organization and community life reflected a high degree of sophistication. Large multi-story stone villages and an impressive 400-mile road system exemplify their engineering and construction talents. A central settlement, Chaco was connected with approximately 75 outlaying communities. It is thought that these agrarian people may have developed this political and economic center to manage and distribute the food supply that varied, due to the vagaries of wet and dry growing seasons. These Anasazi constructed their pueblos with large oversized rooms and also developed a masonry technique that allowed them to build more than 4 stories high. Several of the resulting complexes contained hundreds of rooms and dozens of kivas. A prolonged drought between the 1130s and 1180s may have contributed to the disintegration of Chaco. The architectural ruins remain as a strong testament to the accomplishments of this vanished civilization. (Inscribed in 1987).