New Mexico is unforgiving, but for about 400 years, a small village built atop Guadalupe Mesa provided shelter. Most of what we know about the people that lived here was pieced together by archaeologists that researched the site in the early 1970s. We know that there was a great house in the center of the mesa with about 25 rooms and smaller dwellings once encircled the mesa. The village is the easternmost historic Chacoan village, being some 65 miles from the famous Chaco Canyon settlement, now preserved as a National Historic Park.
In contrast, this mesa-top ruin is extremely remote and is impossible to reach without four wheel drive and experience to use it. If you have the power and suspension to handle it, this trip will bring you through several other ghost towns and near ghost-towns.
Soft rain on Vulcan’s ashy pyre… Both of these peaks are dead volcanos, too hard to be totally washed away by storms. As a result, they seem to rise dramatically from the flat valley.
The hike to the village is steep. This is looking into the valley from the halfway point.
Coming to an inspirational poster near you… what should it read? ADVENTURE AWAITS? Don’t hang posters. Go outside.
Near the base of the mesa is a modern house, which seems to be a ranch of some sort. What a fantastic spot to live, but for the fact every rainstorm floods the arryos, muddy ditches at the bottom of gullies, making it impossible to travel.
A Kiva is an underground, or partly underground, chamber for ceremonies.
This peak is a little over 7,000 feet high and is a popular hiking spot. As a bulky Minnesotan who is better built for an arctic expedition, I stuck to the mesa.
Archeologists believe the great house on the mesa was rebuilt shortly before it was abandoned in the 13th Century AD. Tri-X 400 Film, haphazardly self developed.
The people that stayed here carved bowls from the mesa itself to collect water.
A typical dwelling in San Luis. I could not tell if it was occupied, but most of the town is abandoned.
San Luis may not be a ghost town, but it’s aspiring by all indications. Luckily, it’s close enough to Cuba, NM to hang onto life, unlike the other ghost towns down the road.
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