Compass American Guides: Southwest

This guide to the American Southwest covers Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico. The Southwest is a huge draw for tourists, its abundance of state and national parks, wilderness, American Indian reservations, culture and arts make the region a popular destination.

LANDSCAPE AND HISTORY


The Southwest is a tremendously varied stretch of geography, encompassing much more than the towering bluffs, sheer canyons, and saguaro-studded deserts that symbolize the region in the minds of most of us. Deep canyons, red buttes, and giant cacti certainly are integral parts of the Southwest; but so are lofty mountains, vast forests, and sprawling metropolitan areas.


The arrangement of these physical features has dictated the state's human settlement and economic development throughout history, and still shapes its future. Consequently, the Southwest's history is every bit as complex as its geography. Ancient cliff dwellings, Pueblo villages, Santa Fe's Palace of the Governors, dusty mine shafts, lonely army posts, Mormon pioneers, and hard-working cowboys are as "Southwest" as golf courses, blue corn tortillas, and dried chile wreaths.


Ancient Landscape


The Southwest is an open-air laboratory for geologists, a land where the earth's frame, foundation, and structure are exposed for all to see. Not only is vegetation often sparse, laying open vast tracts of naked earth and rock, but canyons cut deep through the mesas, exposing geologic time in a succession of rock layers. From rim to river, the famed Grand Canyon exposes fully seven periods of geologic time, from the Triassic (about 200 million years ago) to the Precambrian (more than 600 million years ago). More recent epochs are exposed in other parts of the Southwest. Utah, for instance, is particularly noteworthy for the exposed shelves of the Morrison Formation, whose last layer was deposited at the height of the dinosaur age, more than 65 million years ago. These upper strata are what makes Utah so rich in dinosaur fossils; the rocks of the Grand Canyon, however, are just too old for them.


Ancient Cultures


Hunters traversed the Southwest for perhaps 12,000 years before more settled farming cultures began to develop around 300 b.c. Linked by trading routes, these cultures formed several distinct civilizations: the Hohokam of Arizona's low desert, the mountain-dwelling Mogollon, the Sinagua of the Verde Valley and southern Colorado Plateau, and -- most fascinating of all -- the high-desert Anasazi of the Colorado Plateau. In every case, their art, architecture, and perseverance astonish us.


On the Colorado Plateau, the Anasazi culture developed more or less in parallel with their neighbors, the Mogollon. At their peak, however, the Anasazi displayed a sophistication beyond any of their contemporaries. Like the Hohokam, the Anasazi cultivated corn and squash, although their cold and arid land may have given reluctant nourishment. To supplement their diet, they devised remarkably inventive hunting techniques. Nets as long as 200 feet were woven from yucca fiber and human hair, then stretched across gulches by a few people while others chased rabbits toward them.


The first Anasazi people, known to archaeologists as the Basketmakers, lived in saucer-shaped dwellings half above ground and half underground, walled and roofed with a combination of logs and mud mortar. The later Anasazi apparently had frequent contact with other peoples, and their dramatic cultural advancement from A.D. 700 to 1300 shows them to have been extremely adaptive and dynamic. Sometime before A.D. 700, the bow and arrow made its appearance, replacing the less efficient spear and atlatl (wooden spear-thrower). Cotton weaving was introduced, and dogs and turkeys were domesticated.


By A.D. 1100, the Anasazi were beginning to build dramatic cliff dwellings of sandstone masonry, usually in alcoves naturally eroded out of the sides of canyon walls, high above the canyon floor. Some were extremely inaccessible and were usually reached by ladders or handholds and footholds chipped into the rock. These alcoves offered improved shelter from wind, snow, and rain and also helped preserve this incredible architecture for the national parks and monuments throughout the Four Corners.


Their ground-level cities were equally as impressive. At Chaco Canyon, the Anasazi designed a system of dams and ditches that directed the flow of water into fields. Roads connected far-flung pueblos. Men wore ornamental jewelry made of shell, turquoise, and other gemstones, and women wove textiles from cotton they grew in their fields. Their complex architecture and the richness of their relics suggest that an entire pueblo of hundreds of people functioned as an extended family.


The peak of Anasazi civilization, the period of its most ambitious building and most industrious trade with other cultures, spanned only two centuries -- from about 1100 to 1300. Then they abandoned their canyon cities and drifted away, gradually mingling with the Pueblo peoples occupying the high mesas of northern Arizona and the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico. The Hohokam, the Mogollon, and the Sinagua all followed suit. These Early peoples appear to have left their lands because of prolonged drought, overpopulation, and environmental degradation. Much controversy exists as to why marauding tribes may have moved into this area as early as the year 1100 and raided already meager stored-food supplies. Whatever occurred, there is little doubt that the modern Hopi, the Pueblo tribes, the Pima, and the Tohono O'odham are the descendants of those ancient peoples.