Earn Cash Back at Chaco
Chaco Culture National Historical Park is owned and managed by the National Park Service in partnership with the Bureau of Land Management. An interagency management group established by law has representatives from federal, state and tribal agencies working together to protect its components as well as wider archaeological resources in the region.
Chaco began in the seventh century as a religious center. Over time, its influence spread into society at large transforming Ancestral Puebloan world while uniting people from diverse backgrounds through shared ideals and vision. But over time the movement became rigid with traditions limiting some members who sought freedom of choice elsewhere.
Chaco Canyon was where this shift first manifested itself, where small villages gradually morphed into larger settlements centered on great houses with multiple kivas made from massive sandstone masonry structures that replaced wooden posts and adobe walls with massive sandstone masonry structures that featured multiple kivas atop each great house, replacing earlier wooden posts and adobe walls. Stairways allowed climbers to scale mesas, while roads connected them across vast distances thanks to Chaco’s residents’ wealth and prestige acquired through trade of turquoise macaws copper bells shells from faraway places for timber which could then roof their kivas roofed over by traders from faraway places who traded goods from distant places in exchange for roofing timber that roofed their great houses’ great houses’ great houses’ great houses roofed over their kivas’ roofed their kivas roofed great houses that became their trademark feature.
Now, under New Mexico Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s public land order – New Mexico’s first Native American leader and member of Pueblo of Laguna – the lands near Chaco have permanent protection. Her decision places a 20-year moratorium on oil and gas drilling within 10 miles of Chaco; an action supported by tribes, conservation groups, and local politicians alike.