Hovenweep National Monument
Hovenweep National Monument, Utah-Colorado border
Bluff, UT
Ancient stone towers built centuries ago by the Ancestral Puebloan people, standing in the high desert far from any city under one of the darkest skies in the country.
Hovenweep National Monument protects a set of remarkable stone villages built long ago by the Ancestral Puebloan people, on the high desert where Utah meets Colorado. Their square, round, and D-shaped towers rise from the rims and floors of shallow canyons, some still standing two or three stories tall after seven or eight hundred years. The most accessible group, the Square Tower Group, gathers around a small canyon you can walk in a couple of miles, coming within a few feet of the ancient walls.
The monument is also a certified Dark Sky Park, and with no town glow for miles the night here is extraordinary. Stargazers rate darkness on a scale from 1 to 9 called the Bortle scale, where a bright city is a 9 and this remote spot is about a 2, among the darkest skies there are. Thousands of stars and the glowing Milky Way, the cloudy band of our own galaxy, blaze over the ruins. The amazing part is that the very same stars now shining down were watched by the people who built these towers all those centuries ago.
What Guests Love
- Ancient stone towers built by the Ancestral Puebloan people hundreds of years ago
- One of the darkest certified skies in the country, blazing with stars over the ruins
- The deep quiet and solitude of a remote high-desert monument off the beaten path
- The wonder of standing beneath the same stars the tower builders once watched
Worth Knowing
- This is a remote monument reached largely by gravel roads that can be rough in bad weather
- Summers are very hot and there is little shade, so bring plenty of water and sun protection
- The ruins are fragile and precious; stay on trails and do not climb on or touch the walls
- Services are limited, so come with a full tank of gas and everything you need for the day
Details
Bluff, UT
Learn about Hovenweep National Monument
The people who built the towers
The stone villages at Hovenweep were built by the Ancestral Puebloan people, farmers who lived across this region for many centuries. They raised most of these structures in the 1200s, shaping local sandstone by hand into towers, houses, and ceremonial rooms, fitting the stones together with remarkable skill. Some towers may have served for defense or storage, and some seem lined up with the movements of the sun, suggesting the builders watched the sky closely.
By around the year 1300 the people had left, moving south to join other Pueblo communities whose descendants live in the Southwest today. The place lay quiet for centuries, and the name Hovenweep comes from a Ute and Paiute word meaning deserted valley. It became a national monument in 1923 so that these fragile works of stone would be protected and remembered.
A desert of stone and hidden springs
Hovenweep sits on Cajon Mesa, a broad, gently tilting shelf of high desert covered in sagebrush and dotted with juniper. The building stone is a hard sandstone laid down about a hundred million years ago along the shore of an ancient sea, and it is the same stone the villages are made of.
The reason the villages sit where they do is water. Rain and snowmelt soak down through the porous sandstone until they hit a layer of harder rock, then flow sideways and seep out as small springs at the heads of the canyons. Those hidden springs gave the Ancestral Puebloans the water they needed, which is why their towers cluster right at the canyon heads.
Six villages across the mesa
Hovenweep is not a single site but six separate village groups scattered across the mesa, some in Utah and some in Colorado. The largest and easiest to reach is the Square Tower Group, gathered around Little Ruin Canyon near the visitor center, where a loop trail leads past tower after tower.
The other five groups, with names like Holly, Horseshoe, Hackberry, Cutthroat Castle, and Cajon, lie farther out along the mesa and generally take a sturdier vehicle and rougher roads to reach. Visiting them rewards the effort with even greater solitude, standing among ancient walls with no one else around for miles.
The Four Corners country around
Hovenweep sits in the heart of the Four Corners, a region rich with the remains of the Ancestral Puebloan world. Just to the east, across the Colorado line, lies Mesa Verde National Park, famous for its dramatic cliff dwellings tucked into canyon alcoves, a natural companion to Hovenweep's canyon-head towers.
The surrounding land, much of it the Canyons of the Ancients, holds thousands more archaeological sites, and the small town of Cortez, Colorado, offers services and museums that help tell the region's story. To the west, the historic river town of Bluff, Utah, sits on the San Juan River and makes a good base for exploring this quiet, ancient corner of the desert.
Closest Boutels
The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.
Things to Do Near Bluff
Mesa Verde National Park
About 52 miles east
A famous park of Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings tucked into canyon alcoves, a natural pairing with Hovenweep's tower villages.
Cortez
About 40 miles east
The main gateway town on the Colorado side, with services, lodging, and museums covering the region's archaeology.
Bluff
About 40 miles west
A small historic town on the San Juan River that serves as the Utah-side base for visiting the monument.