View of First Ruin from Overlook
Canyon de Chelly National Monument near Chinle, Arizona

Barely visible in the alcove at the center of this photograph is a cliffside dwelling that the Kayenta Anasazi Indians constructed sometime between the 11th and 13th centuries.  It contains ten rooms and two kivas.  Like most of the other cliffside ruins in the park, this ruin faces south in order to take advantage of the low winter sun.  Working under the authority of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Cosmos Mindeleff described the pueblo as the first ruin studied in 1882, and the name stuck.  Photo taken from the Junction Overlook in 1991 by Howard J. Partridge.

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