LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Chaco Canyon: North America
built 631 days ago
Chaco Canyon is 150 miles northwest of Albuquerque, New Mexico -- that's about 3 hours driving time (the last 20+ miles are dirt road). [The map to the right is a link to a larger Adobe Acrobat file with many more related areas shown.]
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Chaco Canyon has no farming today, nor has it any residents except for a few Park Service employees. The canyon has been preserved for its unique role as the hub of a prehistoric civilization in North America and the center of an ancient culture that surpassed in complexity that of any other group of people in what is now the United States.
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The alluvial canyon floor, which slopes downward to the northeast at a gentle grade of 30 feet per mile (6 meters per kilometer), is bisected by the Chaco Wash, an arroyo that only infrequently carries water. Of the canyon's aquifers, the largest are located at a depth that precluded the ancient Chacoans from tapping their groundwater; only a few smaller, shallower sources supported small springs.[9] Significant surface water is virtually non-existent except in the guise of storm runoff flowing intermittently through arroyos.
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