Yucca House National Monument

About this property

Yucca House National Monument is a United States National Monument located in Montezuma County, Colorado between the towns of Towaoc (headquarters of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe) and Cortez, Colorado. Yucca House is a large, unexcavated Ancestral Puebloan archaeological site. Yucca House was established as a national monument in 1919, by President Woodrow Wilson's Proclamation No. 1549. Yucca House National Monument is located in the Montezuma Valley at the foot of Sleeping Ute Mountain, called "mountain with much yucca growing on it" by the Ute people, and inspiration for the name of the national monument. The site is one of many Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi) village sites located in the Montezuma Valley occupied between AD 1100 and 1300 by 13,000 people. A 2020 summary stated that the unexcavated "pueblo village has the ruins of 600 rooms, 100 kivas, several towers, multiple plazas, unexplained structures and one great kiva". Western Complex was a large pueblo of up to 600 rooms, 100 kivas and a giant, perhaps community, kiva. A spring runs through the complex. A large building about 80 × 100 feet, Upper House, was made of adobe. The ruins are about 12 to 15 feet high, but may have been twice that height. Lower House is an L-shaped pueblo 200 feet by 180 inches with a plaza, 8 small rooms 7 × 2 feet and a large kiva Nearby were the ancient pueblo village of Mud Springs at the head of McElmo Canyon and Navajo Springs, was the original site of the Ute Mountain Indian Agency south of Sleeping Ute Mountain in the early 1900s. Like other nearby Ancient Pueblo peoples, the Yucca House pueblo dwellers abandoned their homes, but because a major excavation has not been completed it is not known when, or if there is a relationship between these people and those of nearby pueblo settlements. William Henry Holmes visited in 1875 and in 1878 produced a report for the United States Geological Survey. Holmes erroneously named the land "Aztec Springs" believing that ruins were the home of a band of Aztecs. He created the initial map of the ruins. Holmes reports: "These ruins form the most imposing pile of masonry yet found in Colorado. The whole group covers an area of about 480,00 square feet, and has an average depth of from 3 to 4 feet. [...] The stone used is chiefly of the fossiliferous limestone that outcrops along the base of the Mesa Verde a mile or so away." In 1918 J. Walter Fewkes studied and remapped the ruins An excavation was completed by the Museum of Natural History in New York in the late 1910s led by Earl Morris and, in the 5th year of excavation led by Dr. Clark Wissler. Wissler found that the interior walls of the "remarkable shrine room" were painted white with a red border and the floor covered with expertly cut slabs of stone, similar to one of the rooms at the Mesa Verde National Park. A sacred 2½ foot serpent was carved into wood at the ceiling.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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