Peñasco Blanco

Peñasco Blanco is the most distant of the Chacoan great houses on the loop, an oval pueblo on a mesa top at the far west end of the canyon. The 11 km round-trip trail follows the wash, passing pictograph panels including the famous Supernova Pictograph on the cliff face about 5 km in.

Few visitors make the full walk, and on a quiet day you can have the ruin to yourself. Allow four to five hours, and start at dawn in summer — there is no shade.

things to do sight
A story
On the cliff below Peñasco Blanco, a red-and-yellow pictograph shows a hand, a crescent moon, and a brilliant ten-pointed star. Many archaeologists read it as a Chacoan record of the supernova of 4 July 1054 — the explosion that left behind the Crab Nebula and which was bright enough in daylight to be visible for weeks.

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