Tusayan Ruins

Last updated

Tusayan Ruins
Tusayan Kiva.jpg
A kiva
USA Arizona location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Usa edcp location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Nearest city Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, United States
Coordinates 36°0′49″N111°51′56″W / 36.01361°N 111.86556°W / 36.01361; -111.86556
Built1200
Architectural stylePueblo
NRHP reference No. 74000285 [1]
Added to NRHPJuly 10, 1974

The Tusayan Ruins (aka Tusayan Pueblo) is an 800-year-old Pueblo Indian site located within Grand Canyon National Park, [2] and is considered by the National Park Service (NPS) to be one of the major archeological sites in Arizona. [3] The site consists of a small, u-shaped pueblo featuring a living area, storage rooms, and a kiva. [2] Tree ring studies indicate that the site was occupied for about twenty years, beginning around 1185. [2] It is found on the Desert View Drive portion of Arizona State Route 64, 3 miles west of the Desert View Watchtower. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. [1]

Contents

The site was excavated in 1930 by members of the Gila Pueblo of Globe, Arizona. Preservation work took place in 1948 and 1965. The site represents the survival of an isolated Pueblo II culture into the Pueblo III era. [4]

The Tusayan Ruin and Museum is a NPS interpreted location, which includes a trail from the museum thru part of the ruin. Tours may be ranger lead or self-guided. [5] The Tusayan Museum was built in 1928 to a design by National Park Service architect Herbert Maier and sponsored by Laura Spelman Rockefeller as a trailside museum. It was expanded in 1934, and represents an interpretation of a Hopi structure. [6]

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. March 13, 2009.
  2. 1 2 3 Tusayan Ruin visitor brochure, National Park Service
  3. Archeological Sites in Arizona, National Park Service
  4. Holland, F. Ross (August 31, 1972). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory – Nomination Form: Tusayan Ruins". National Park Service. Retrieved December 5, 2011.
  5. A visit to Tusayan Ruin and Museum (multimedia), National Park Service
  6. Kaiser, Harvey H. (1997). Landmarks in the Landscape: Historic Architecture in the National Parks of the West. Chronicle Books. pp. 226–227. ISBN   0-8118-1854-3.

Further reading

A food storage building Tusayan at the Grand Canyon-storage areas.jpeg
A food storage building

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Petrified Forest National Park</span> National park in Arizona, United States

Petrified Forest National Park is an American national park in Navajo and Apache counties in northeastern Arizona. Named for its large deposits of petrified wood, the park covers about 346 square miles, encompassing semi-desert shrub steppe as well as highly eroded and colorful badlands. The park's headquarters is about 26 miles (42 km) east of Holbrook along Interstate 40 (I-40), which parallels the BNSF Railway's Southern Transcon, the Puerco River, and historic U.S. Route 66, all crossing the park roughly east–west. The site, the northern part of which extends into the Painted Desert, was declared a national monument in 1906 and a national park in 1962. The park received 644,922 recreational visitors in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument</span> United States historic place

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument is a U.S. National Monument created to protect Mogollon cliff dwellings in the Gila Wilderness on the headwaters of the Gila River in southwest New Mexico. The 533-acre (2.16 km2) national monument was established by President Theodore Roosevelt through executive proclamation on November 16, 1907. It is located in the extreme southern portion of Catron County. Visitors can access the monument by traveling northbound from Silver City, New Mexico, 45 miles (72 km) on NM 15.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Casa Grande Ruins National Monument</span> Ancient place in Coolidge, Arizona

Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, in Coolidge, Arizona, just north-east of the city of Casa Grande, preserves a group of Hohokam structures dating to the Classic Period (1150–1450 CE).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walnut Canyon National Monument</span> Protected area in Coconino County, Arizona

Walnut Canyon National Monument is a United States National Monument located about 10 mi (16 km) southeast of downtown Flagstaff, Arizona, near Interstate 40. The canyon rim elevation is 6,690 ft (2,040 m); the canyon's floor is 350 ft lower. A 0.9 mi (1.4 km) long loop trail descends 185 ft (56 m) into the canyon passing 25 cliff dwelling rooms constructed by the Sinagua, a pre-Columbian cultural group that lived in Walnut Canyon from about 1100 to 1250 AD. Other contemporary habitations of the Sinagua people are preserved in the nearby Tuzigoot and Montezuma Castle national monuments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hovenweep National Monument</span> US national monument

Hovenweep National Monument is located on land in southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah, between Cortez, Colorado and Blanding, Utah on the Cajon Mesa of the Great Sage Plain. Shallow tributaries run through the wide and deep canyons into the San Juan River.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Navajo National Monument</span> National monument in Arizona, United States

Navajo National Monument is a National Monument located within the northwest portion of the Navajo Nation territory in northern Arizona, which was established to preserve three well-preserved cliff dwellings of the Ancestral Puebloan people: Keet Seel, Betatakin, and Inscription House. The monument is high on the Shonto plateau, overlooking the Tsegi Canyon system, west of Kayenta, Arizona. It features a visitor center with a museum, three short self-guided trails, two small campgrounds, and a picnic area.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Colter</span> American architect (1869–1958)

Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter was an American architect and designer. She was one of the very few female American architects in her day. She was the designer of many landmark buildings and spaces for the Fred Harvey Company and the Santa Fe Railroad, notably in Grand Canyon National Park. Her work had enormous influence as she helped to create a style, blending Spanish Colonial Revival and Mission Revival architecture with Native American motifs and Rustic elements, that became popular throughout the Southwest. Colter was a perfectionist, who spent a lifetime advocating and defending her aesthetic vision in a largely male-dominated field.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glen Canyon</span> Part of the Colorado River in Utah and Arizona, US

Glen Canyon is a natural canyon carved by a 169.6-mile (272.9 km) length of the Colorado River, mostly in southeastern and south-central Utah, in the United States. Glen Canyon starts where Narrow Canyon ends, at the confluence of the Colorado River and the Dirty Devil River. A small part of the lower end of Glen Canyon extends into northern Arizona and terminates at Lee's Ferry, near the Vermilion Cliffs. Like the Grand Canyon farther downstream, Glen Canyon is part of the immense system of canyons carved by the Colorado River and its tributaries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Canyons of the Ancients National Monument</span> Monument protecting significant sites of ancient Native Americans

Canyons of the Ancients National Monument is a national monument protecting an archaeologically significant landscape located in the southwestern region of the U.S. state of Colorado. The monument's 176,056 acres (71,247 ha) are managed by the Bureau of Land Management, as directed in the presidential proclamation which created the site on June 9, 2000. Canyons of the Ancients National Monument is part of the National Landscape Conservation System, better known as the National Conservation Lands. This system comprises 32 million acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management to conserve, protect, and restore these nationally significant landscapes recognized for their outstanding cultural, ecological, and scientific values. Canyons of the Ancients encompasses and surrounds three of the four separate sections of Hovenweep National Monument, which is administered by the National Park Service. The monument was proclaimed in order to preserve the largest concentration of archaeological sites in the United States, primarily Ancestral Puebloan ruins. As of 2022, over 8,500 individual archeological sites had been documented within the monument.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salmon Ruins</span> United States historic place

Salmon Ruins is an ancient Chacoan and Pueblo site located in the northwest corner of New Mexico, USA. Salmon was constructed by migrants from Chaco Canyon around 1090 CE, with 275 to 300 original rooms spread across three stories, an elevated tower kiva in its central portion, and a great kiva in its plaza. Subsequent use by local Middle San Juan people resulted in extensive modifications to the original building, with the reuse of hundreds of rooms, division of many of the original large, Chacoan rooms into smaller rooms, and emplacement of more than 20 small kivas into pueblo rooms and plaza areas. The site was occupied by ancient Ancestral Puebloans until the 1280s, when much of the site was destroyed by fire and abandoned. The pueblo is situated on the north bank of the San Juan River, just to the west of the modern town of Bloomfield, New Mexico, and about 45 miles (72 km) north of Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon. The site was built on the first alluvial terrace above the San Juan River floodplain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lowry Pueblo</span> Archaeological site in Colorado, United States

The Lowry Pueblo is an Ancestral Puebloan archaeological site located in Canyons of the Ancients National Monument near Pleasant View, Colorado, United States. The pueblo was constructed around 1060 AD atop abandoned pithouses from an earlier period of occupation. It was occupied by 40 to 100 people at a time for 165 years. The site is one of the northernmost to be associated with the Puebloan cultures. The site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Jane Colter buildings</span> United States historic place

The Mary Jane Colter Buildings are four structures at Grand Canyon National Park designed by Mary Colter. Built between 1905 and 1932, the four buildings are among the best examples of Colter's work, and were influential in the development of an aesthetic for architecture to be used in America's National Park System. As a set, they were declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kinishba Ruins</span> Archaeological site in Arizona, United States

Kinishba Ruins is a 600-room Mogollon great house archaeological site in eastern Arizona and is administered by the White Mountain Apache Tribe. It is located on the present-day Fort Apache Indian Reservation, in the Apache community of Canyon Day. As it demonstrates a combination of both Mogollon and Ancestral Puebloan cultural traits, archaeologists consider it part of the historical lineage of both the Hopi and Zuni cultures. It is designated as a National Historic Landmark.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pueblo Grande Ruin and Irrigation Sites</span> Archaeological park in Arizona

Pueblo Grande Ruin and Irrigation Sites are pre-Columbian archaeological sites and ruins, located in Phoenix, Arizona. They include a prehistoric platform mound and irrigation canals. The City of Phoenix manages these resources as the S’edav Va’aki Museum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tuzigoot National Monument</span> Historic site in Yavapai County, Arizona, US

Tuzigoot National Monument preserves a 2- to 3-story pueblo ruin on the summit of a limestone and sandstone ridge just east of Clarkdale, Arizona, 120 feet (37 m) above the Verde River floodplain. The Tuzigoot Site is an elongated complex of stone masonry rooms that were built along the spine of a natural outcrop in the Verde Valley. The central rooms stand higher than the others and they appear to have served public functions. The pueblo has 110 rooms. The National Park Service currently administers 58 acres, within an authorized boundary of 834 acres.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ansel Hall Ruin</span> Archaeological site in Colorado, United States

The Ansel Hall Ruin, also known as Cahone Ruin, is located in Cahone, Dolores County, Colorado. A pre-historic ruins from the Pueblo II period, the Northern San Juan pueblo was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kin Tiel</span> United States historic place

Kin Tiel, also known as the Wide Ruins, is an historic site listed on the National Register of Historic Places, located about fifty miles north of Chambers, Arizona, in Apache County. It is the ruins of a large pueblo, which has undergone extensive exploration and excavation. It was added to the register on May 22, 1978.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Puerco Ruin and Petroglyphs</span> NRHP Anasazi ruins in Arizona

Puerco Ruin and Petroglyphs are the ruins of a large Indian pueblo, which reached its peak around 1300 CE, containing over 100 rooms. It is the largest known archeological site within the Petrified Forest National Park.