“ You are standing near the ceiling level of the ground floor rooms. Rock debris and silting from the canyon wall has buried the lower part of the house. By referring to the ground plan at the front of the booklet you can see that this section 6 of the wall is a “curtain wall” with a narrow, triangular space behind it. Visible in the masonry are the butts of small poles used as tie rods that bridge the opening behind the wall. ”

“ You may walk into this small ground floor storeroom to inspect the original ceiling. The doorway was once plugged with masonry, but it was opened by an early explorer. This section of the pueblo is part of the first construction of Pueblo Bonito behind the older pueblo of the A.D. 900’s. Tree-ring dates from the Ponderosa pine vigas indicate that the room was built in A.D. 1038. Peeled willow sticks were laid across the beams and covered with juniper bark, and finally about six inches of packed soil to make a floor for the room above. The room to the left has not been excavated. ”

“ The rooms surrounding you are part of the old, southeast-facing pueblo, built between 919 and about 936, over and around which the grander Pueblo Bonito was built 100 years later. Note the cruder masonry and thinner walls. The vertical poles incorporated into the wall in front of you represent an earlier method of construction. Often the poles supported a matting or wattle of small branches which served as lath to hold a thin wall of mud 7 plaster. ”

“ Excavation of Pueblo Bonito was begun in 1896 by Richard Wetherill who homesteaded in the canyon, and by George H. Pepper of the American Museum of Natural History. The work was financed by two wealthy young brothers from New York, Frederick and Talbot Hyde, who formed the Hyde Exploring Expedition for the purpose. In four seasons 190 rooms were cleaned out. ”

“ A relatively smaller population of Anasazi had inhabited the canyon for at least 500 years when, with the building of Pueblo Bonito and other large communal houses, the population was greatly swelled. ”

“ The round holes are sockets for vigas, ceiling beams.
2
The large, broken stones here and to your left are what remain of Threatening Rock, a large vertical slab of native rock which once stood separated from the cliff by a wide crack. The people of Pueblo Bonito felt the threat of its fall, for using posts, mud, and stone masonry, they attempted to shore up the rock, or 3 to prevent erosion of its base. ”

“ The increased demands for wood and water, 5 more intensive cultivation, and the heavy foot traffic on friable soil undoubtedly placed a strain on the environment, but the deterioration of resources alone doesn’t explain the total abandonment of the area at about A.D. 1300. ”