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The Luna Valley Ruins — attempting to preserve ten rooms and a great kiva
Last updated on Friday, July 18, 2003
The Luna Valley Dig
Courtesy Photo
The high valley in which the tiny town of Luna, New Mexico, sits is surpassingly beautiful. The San Francisco River courses by under enormous cottonwood trees, and the green valley stretches between piney mountains. Luna itself, rustic and basic, could hail from an era when cowpokes rode alongside their herds, ropes a-twirl, spurs flashing in the sunlight.
Actually, an even more radical time shift is required of the visitor who would take in everything Luna has to offer. With the re-opening of the Hough Ruin (pronounced HUFF), one must stretch one's imagination 700 years back in time, when another civilization peopled this lovely valley.
The Hough Site was first identified by Smithsonian archaeologist Walter Hough in 1907 when he mapped six sites in the Luna Valley. Fifty years later a team of archaeologists from the Museum of New Mexico excavated four rooms at the Hough site. These were backfilled and left intact until 1992, when a highway construction project brought the Hough Site back into the public eye. In 1995, while excavating ten rooms, archaeologists from the Museum of New Mexico discovered a great kiva.
That excavation project revealed a number of features which set the Hough site apart from other Mogollon ruins. It is large, L-shaped and multi-storied, with 20 to 35 rooms; and it has two kivas, including one great kiva. Kivas were used for religious purposes, and great kivas served not only the immediate community, but probably also neighboring pueblos.
The residents of economically depressed Catron County had hoped to protect the site and build a visitor center complete with handicap access. Zuni tribal officials, north of Luna, who claim the Mogollon people as ancestors, gave their approval of the project. The State Highway Department was cooperative, moving its expansion project twenty feet north so a shelter could be built over the excavated ruins.
The State Highway Department turned the site over to the U.S. Forest Service, to give the community time to raise funds for its preservation. The cost to build a permanent structure over the ten excavated rooms and the kiva, a visitor center with handicap access, and parking lots, was estimated at $300,000 in the '90s — the money was never raised.
With Highway 180 passing directly by its back door, the Hough Ruin is a perfect site for education and interpretation. The Luna Valley Ruins could link Casa Malpais National Historic Landmark in Springerville, Arizona, with Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument near Silver City, New Mexico, creating an archaeological scenic route. Of the three ruins, the Luna Valley Ruin would be the only one offering access to the handicapped. Development of the Luna Valley Ruins Interpretive Site would enhance recreational opportunities, promote site preservation, and encourage economic growth for Catron County.
Now all the Luna Valley Ruins need is money.
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