Chaco's largest great house held goods traded from thousands of kilometres away, and the modern landscape around the canyon is now the subject of an active fight over oil and gas leases.
A great house built for more than local use
Pueblo Bonito, the largest of Chaco Canyon's great houses, was built in multiple construction phases reaching several stories and hundreds of rooms, and excavations recovered turquoise, copper bells and the remains of scarlet macaws, birds native to Mexico and Central America, evidence of long-distance trade and exchange networks reaching far beyond the immediate region.
A modern fight over the land nearby
Land surrounding Chaco Canyon has been subject to extensive oil and gas leasing, and Indigenous-led advocacy, including from Navajo and Pueblo communities with ancestral ties to the site, has pushed for a protective buffer zone limiting drilling near the canyon, a live contemporary land-use dispute that sits alongside, but is distinct from, the scholarly debate over the ancient road and alignment system.
As this entry's companion article covers
Chaco's extensive network of engineered roads radiating outward from the canyon, and the specific astronomical alignments built into several great houses, along with the still-unresolved scholarly dispute over their exact purpose, are addressed directly in this entry's companion article rather than repeated here.