In Chaco Canyon, a desert valley in northwestern New Mexico, between the early AD 900s and the late 1100s, the Anasazi created a civilization whose architecture, social organization and community life reflected a high degree of sophistication. Large multi-story stone villages and an impressive 400-mile road system exemplify their engineering and construction talents. A central settlement, Chaco was connected with approximately 75 outlaying communities. It is thought that these agrarian people may have developed this political and economic center to manage and distribute the food supply that varied, due to the vagaries of wet and dry growing seasons. These Anasazi constructed their pueblos with large oversized rooms and also developed a masonry technique that allowed them to build more than 4 stories high. Several of the resulting complexes contained hundreds of rooms and dozens of kivas. A prolonged drought between the 1130s and 1180s may have contributed to the disintegration of Chaco. The architectural ruins remain as a strong testament to the accomplishments of this vanished civilization.

Chaco is remarkable for its monumental and ceremonial buildings, and its distinctive architecture. To construct the buildings, along with the associated Chacoan roads, ramps, dams, and mounds, required a great deal of well organized and skillful planning, designing, resource gathering, and construction. The Chacoan people combined pre-planned architectural designs, astronomical alignments, geometry, landscaping, and engineering to create an ancient urban center of spectacular public architecture - one that still amazes and inspires us a thousand years later.

The Chacoan cultural sites are fragile and irreplaceable and represent a significant part of America's cultural heritage. The sites are part of the sacred homeland of Pueblo Indian peoples of New Mexico, the Hopi Indians of Arizona, and the Navajo Indians of the Southwest, all of whom continue to respect and honor them.

Physically, Chaco Culture National Historical Park is in a long, shallow canyon that is centrally located within the San Juan Basin of northwestern New Mexico. The canyon was carved into the basin by what is now known as the Chaco Wash, a tributary of the San Juan River.