The Four Corners are so named for the country where the southwestern states of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado meet. If you want an insight into pre-Colombian North America and some spectacular canyon scenery, this high desert area should be on your list.
Many of the sites visited are operated by the National Park Service (https://www.nps.gov/planyourvisit/index.htm), and you can plan ahead here. This trip was done in Winter and so while some of the park areas were closed, it wasn’t busy. Camping was out and so a decent size city stop worked well for overnights.
Durango, Colorado. Durango is a good hub for the area and is convenient to the Mesa Verde and Aztec Ruins parks, as well as being a great center for skiing and the southern Colorado outdoors.
Once you’ve walked Main Avenue, and checked out the Durango & Silverton narrow gauge steam railroad station, you’ve pretty much seen the place. There are good hikes nearby, such as the trails around Animas Mountain (trailhead at W 33rd St.).
You can chose to stay in one of the older downtown hotels and there are some newer chain places less than 10 minute walk just west of downtown along Highway 160. The El Rancho Tavern is a good local dive bar; Steamboat Brewing Company has excellent craft beer and a decent menu; and there are some good Mexican restaurants in town, including Los Amigos del Sur and the superbly named Tequila’s Family Mexican Restaurant.
Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico. Located roughly halfway between Albuquerque and Durango, the Chaco Canyon was home to a complex of settlements containing great houses and religious sites, constructed between the mid-800s and 1100s. The area was the center of the Chacoan administrative world, connected by road networks to other communities.
Most of the settlements are located in Chaco Canyon, at a 6,200-foot elevation, although there is another complex – Pueblo Alto – located on the mesa to the north. Take a good pair of hiking or trail shoes so that you can climb up the initially steep Pueblo Alto Trail onto the top of the mesa, for a great view of the Pueblo Bonito and Kin Kletso great houses, and to access the Pueblo Alto sites. Another longer but flatter trail further west along the canyon can be made to the Penasco Blanco, with petroglyphs seen along the way.
The settlement’s largest great house, Pueblo Bonito, is a multi-level D-shaped mix of rooms, plazas and kivas. Kivas are partially sunken circular social, ceremonial and religious spaces, entered via a ladder through the roof. Kivas were equipped with hearths and were usually covered with a wood-beamed roof and surrounded by a plaza. Some of the interiors are known to have had plastered and muralled walls, although it’s unclear how common this was.
Kin Kletso, is a rectangular great house located just below the trail leading up to the Pueblo Alto Complex, and is a later construction from the early 1100s.
The Pueblo del Arroyo, in the center of the valley, is a large round multi-storey great house. Look for the few remaining wood timbers used to support the floors. Further southeast of the Pueblo de Arroyoa lies the largest kiva, at Casa Rinconada.
The Park is located about 21 miles southwest of Highway 550, of which 16 miles is hilly dirt track. You can reach it in a regular 2×2 vehicle when the track is dry, but be careful if rain or snow is in the forecast in which case a 4×4 is advisable.
Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. An hour’s drive west of Durango along Highway 160, Mesa Verde contains one of the largest cliff dwelling sites in the Americas, set in a network of canyons. The Anasazi people – often called the Ancestral Puebloans – originally settled on the high mesa around the cliff tops in the mid-500s CE. The first permanent pit houses were constructed on the high mesa in the mid-700s, and the approximately 600 canyon dwellings were built in the late 1100s to mid-1200s. These were vacated around 1300 as the Anasazi moved further south, likely owing to drought and crop failure. The Spruce Tree House, one of the first cliff dwellings on the itinerary, is estimated to have been built in the early-mid 1200s, and has about 115 rooms and 8 kivas.
The dwellings open for park tours in the Spring and Summer of each year – book ahead and be ready to climb some ladders. The Square Tower House, built in the mid-1200s and named for its 4-level structure, was the tallest building in the US until the mid-1800s.
The most notable temple is the Sun Temple, located on a promontory overlooking Fewkes Canyon, where most of the major structures are located.
The 150-room Cliff Palace, built into a large cave, is the largest cliff dwelling in the US, with multi-storey buildings built of stone and mud mortar, supported by wooden beams.
The Oak Tree House is built into two levels of cave ledges and contains about 60 rooms.
Flagstaff, Arizona. Situated almost 7,000 feet above sea level in the San Francisco Peaks, Flagstaff is an excellent stopover town, that also provides a good base for local skiing and hiking. There is a contained 19th-century downtown served by Amtrak, with older hotels north of the railway station, and a cluster of newer hotels and motels about a 10-minute walk southwest along South Milton Road. Flagstaff is a good craft beer destination, with Dark Sky Brewing, Mother Road Brewing and the Mountain Top Tap Room being amongst those worth a visit.
Other parks worth considering include the Canyon de Chelly, which requires advance booking of a guide in order to fully explore the canyon, either on foot or 4×4 vehicle. The Canyons of the Ancients and Petrified Forest national parks, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Hovenweep National Monument, are worth a look. Finally, Flagstaff is a good base to explore nearby parks at Sedona (Red Rocks) and the south side of the Grand Canyon.
Logistics. The Four Corners are relatively isolated and populated by dispersed communities. Albuquerque, Durango and Flagstaff are convenient small- and mid-size airports, and Las Vegas and Phoenix are viable large-hub airport entry points. You will have to plan the journeys between the various sites and cities, unless you are good with camping or overnighting in isolated areas. For example, Chaco Canyon is a feasible visit between Albuquerque-Durango (3.5 hours), but you would have to pick between Mesa Verde and Canyon de Chelly if you wanted to include one of them on the longer Durango-Flagstaff run (5 hours) in a single day. One solution is to treat Mesa Verde as a daytrip from Durango and then visit Canyon de Chelly on the way to Flagstaff. The city of Gallup, NM is also a convenient mid-way stopover between Durango and Flagstaff.
