I used to live in southwestern Colorado, only a few hours from Mesa Verde. It was during a trip to Mesa Verde, actually, that I first learned about Chaco Canyon, which is a few hours to the south. The NPS employee manning the Mesa Verde bookstore that day insisted that I just had to visit Chaco Canyon because it was amazing. And since I was kind of just meandering around for the next few days and didn't need to get back home for two more, I decided to do something crazy and deviate from my itinerary - and am I glad that I did!

Chaco Canyon is indeed amazing. To be honest, it's a bitch to get to, about twenty miles off of Route 550, and only four of those miles are paved. When I went the first time, the road was seriously just sand and washboard ruts (the last time I went, the NPS had just laid down some gravel, but I'm not sure how long that lasts). It took me nearly an hour to drive those sixteen miles, and I figured that I'd need at least a front-end alignment for my car and a serious massage for my newly-acquired aches and pains. But then you get the breathtaking view of Fajada Butte, and that's only the beginning.

All of the times I've gone to Chaco Canyon, it's been relatively quiet. It's not as well-known as Mesa Verde, and it's much less accessible. That translates into the ability to wander through the ruins with minimal human interaction, which is always a plus for me in these sites. I love to think and think and think some more, and I just can't do that when people are clamoring behind me trying to get the best selfie so they can post it on Instagram. And yes, Mesa Verde's Cliff Palace is beautiful and awe-inspiring, but I'd argue that Pueblo Bonito is just as beautiful and even more awe-inspiring. And at Chaco Canyon, you aren't kept separate from the ruins like you are in Mesa Verde, only allowed to approach in carefully guided and time-controlled ranger programs. Nope, you can spend all day in Pueblo Bonito if you want, or hike up to the Pueblo Alto complex and wander around for hours, or take a splendid backcountry hike to Peñasco Blanco and see pottery shards still littering the ground of that unexcavated great house, hundreds of years after the people who made those pieces of pottery left the area.

Chaco Canyon is magical.

Fagan tries to bring that magic to a general audience in this book. He discusses the various eras of Chaco Canyon, the people who built and inhabited the place, the possible connections with other communities, and why the people ultimately left the area. (In spite of what some sensationalist "stories" try to proclaim, the ancestral Puebloan people did not "vanish." They dispersed, moving to other settlements or founding their own in other locations. Their descendants still populate the Four Corners area and beyond.)

Fagan tends to repeat himself a lot, and the book skips around quite a bit, even though he tries to proceed in a linear way. The book also says that it presents various ideas about Chaco, which it technically does, although Fagan is quick to dismiss those he doesn't particularly agree with or those he sees as "unconventional" (which I am guessing is archaeologist-speak for "nutcase"). Fagan tends to favor the "conservative" ideas of Chaco as being more correct, which is really a shame, because I love to read about speculation and possibilities. He also agree s with Gwinn Vivian on EVERYTHING, apparently. I mean, I know that Vivian is one of the pillars of research when it comes to Chaco Canyon, but I there are others out there who also provide interesting and unique research (those are the "unconventional" types, I suppose).

The pictures are also OLD - which isn't necessarily bad, since Chaco has changed little in a hundred years (some of the pictures are from the 1930s), except for part of Pueblo Bonito being obliterated by the collapse of Threatening Rock, but some of them really don't do justice to the areas discussed. For example, the picture of Mesa Verde's Cliff Palace is taken so far away from Cliff Palace that if you don't know the geography of the area, you might have a hard time even locating Cliff Palace in the picture (it's the left-central top portion of the picture, FYI).

Still, this isn't a bad starting point for those interested in Chaco Canyon; I'd highly recommend those who plan on visiting the place to read up on it before going, because it's just so much more interesting than the few sentences on the signs in the park proper can possibly explain. ( )