Lowry Pueblo is a national landmark you can walk up to

Many of the ancient sites in this county are fragile, hard to reach, or off-limits without a guide. Lowry Pueblo is one of the places set up for visitors to walk right up to it.

Lowry Pueblo sits in Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, northwest of Cortez near the small community of Pleasant View. It is an Ancestral Puebloan village built and rebuilt roughly a thousand years ago, on top of an even older settlement. Over time it grew to around 40 rooms with several kivas, including a large Great Kiva used for community gatherings, and one kiva that was once painted with bold geometric designs.

The site is named for George Lowry, a homesteader who lived nearby in the early 1900s, not for the people who built it. It was excavated in the 1930s and named a National Historic Landmark in the 1960s, which marks it as nationally significant.

The Bureau of Land Management manages the site with a developed trail, signs, and a small picnic area. It is a calm, uncrowded way to see standing stone masonry up close. As at all sites in the monument, walking on walls or removing anything is not allowed, and the structures are stabilized but still old and delicate.

For directions, current access, and visitor rules, check the BLM’s Lowry Pueblo page before you go.