NO. I ARCHITECTURE OF PUEBLO BONITO — JUDD 3 



We measured the elevation out in front of Pueblo Bonito at 6,250 

 feet, an elevation that indicates long winters and a relatively short 

 growing season. Despite this handicap the ancient peoples who dwelt 

 in Chaco Canyon obviously were content with their environment for 

 they stayed on generation after generation, tilling their gardens of 

 maize, beans, and pumpkins and building new homes as the need 

 arose. Lacking local records — the nearest dependable rainfall gage 

 was at the Crownpoint Indian Agency, 40 miles distant and 600 feet 

 higher — we have assumed a current annual precipitation of 10 inches 

 but this is clearly less than formerly. Chaco Canyon was greener 

 when Pueblo Bonito was inhabited and pine trees, cottonwoods, wil- 

 lows, and rushes grew close at hand. Willows and a few cottonwoods 

 still survived as late as 1922 when Anderson prepared the map pub- 

 lished by Bryan (1954), but only rotted stumps, recumbent trunks 

 and two dead pines remained of the nearby forests that had furnished 

 timbers for the roofs of Pueblo Bonito (pi. 2, left, right). 



Many of those timbers had grown under variable conditions, but 

 others had stood where subsurface water was so constant as to pro- 

 duce annual growth rings of uniform thickness. Such uniformity 

 plus the willows, the rushes, and the cottonwoods all attest to a wetter 

 climate 800 or more years ago. We found no living spring but saw 

 small, thin reeds struggling for survival in sheltered coves where rain- 

 water seeps through the sandstone. In upper Rincon del Camino 

 one of our Navaho workmen had developed such a seepage zone into 

 a one- family water supply, the only one of its kind known to us. 

 Huntington (1914, p. 80) mentions a former spring half a mile from 

 "Hermoso," the south-cliff ruin known to National Park Service per- 

 sonnel as Tsin Kletsin. The precise location of that spring remains 

 uncertain but it could be at the head of a shallow rincon just east of 

 Casa Rinconada where Navaho indicated a wet-weather seep. 



We have postulated a current annual precipitation of 10 inches, 

 but just a little more would multiply native vegetation and thus 

 provide a check to floodwater erosion. One additional inch, accord- 

 ing to our geological advisers, would cause springs to flow again. 

 One additional inch per year, it is believed, would restore Chaco 

 Canyon to the haven it once was, bring back the grasslands where 

 deer and antelope browsed, and increase the harvest of seeds and 

 wild fruits available for human consumption.^ The arroyo that has 

 made Chaco Canyon a wasteland since 1850, like the one that caused 



1 Mammalian remains and plant products recovered from Bonitian rubbish 

 during the Society's investigations are listed in Judd, 1954. 



