Links to Parks and Monuments

Arizona

• Navajo National Monument: Located on Navajo Nation land this monument contains two large Anasazi villages, Betatkin and Keet Seel. Betatkin is accessible via a 5 mile ranger led hike while Keet Seel is accessible via a 20 mile round trip hike, only after obtaining one of a limited number of permits.
• Tonto National Monument located NE of Phoenix, this monument contains a set of cliff dwellings of the Salado (Salt) group of the Hohokam.
• Walnut Canyon National Monument located just outside of Flagstaff.
• Wupatki National Monument located just outside of Flagstaff.
• Tuzigoot National Monument - haven't been there. Sinagua culture. Includes a 110 room, 3 story ruin.
• Canyon de Chelly National Monument: Located on Navajo Nation land. The White House ruin is accessible via a foot trail from the canyon rim. All other access requires that you hire a native guide to accompany you in either his or your 4WD vehicle (since many Navajo live in the canyon and understandably don't want a bunch of ignorant tourists traipsing through their back yards).
• Montezuma Castle National Monument - haven't been there. Sinagua culture.

New Mexico

• Bandelier National Monument located in beautiful Frijoles canyon near Los Alamos. Frijoles canyon is carved out of the soft volcanic tuff of the Jemez mountains. Several village ruins on the canyon floor as well as rooms carved into the soft cliff walls can be visited.
• Chaco Canyon National Moument represents perhaps the heart and highest level of the Anasazi culture. This broad valley contains several of the largest ruins to be found anywhere, including Pueblo Bonito, a 5 story complex containing over 600 of rooms, and Chetro Ketl containing over 500 rooms. Probably my favorite of the parks.
• Aztec Ruins National Monument is another Anasazi ruin and has nothing to do with the Aztecs of Mexico. In addition to several typical sets of ruins, Aztec contains a completely restored (and quite impressive) Great Kiva which you can enter. I have not been to the nearby Salmon ruins in Bloomfield.
• Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument is one of the more remote sets of ruins located in the southern Gila Mountains and accessible by a good by very winding road which takes much longer to drive than a map might suggest. The Gila ruins are from the Mogollon culture.
• Petroglyph National Monument located just west of Albuquerque on the edge of a large basalt flow from some nearby volcanoes this monument contains numerous petroglyphs (as the name implies).
• Pecos National Historic Park - haven't been there. Contains ruins of the Pecos pueblo and 2 Spanish missions.
• El Murrow National Monument is preserved primarily as an inscription rock. There are some petroglyphs and ruins, but the primary draw here are inscriptions from some of the early Spanish explorers such as Onate.
• Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument is comprised of several sites (Quarai, Abo, Gran Quivara) in central New Mexico. Each of the sites contains a pueblo and Spanish Mission. The Spaniards arrived in the early 1600s and by 1670 the natives and Spaniards were gone - a result of disease, mistreatment by the Spaniards, and raiding by plains Indians. There are good pueblo ruins here, some excavated, some not, and impressive stone churches built by the Spaniards with forced labor from the natives.

Utah

• Hovenweep National Monument consists of several small, separate sites containing ruins demonstrating excellent stone work and building ability.
• Canyon Lands National Park is best known for its spectacular desert canyons. However it also contains numerous small ruins and petroglyphs, including the famous "Newspaper Rock" petroglyph.

Colorado

• Mesa Verde National Park: Without a doubt, the most famous Anasazi ruins. The park contains a very large collection of ruins including well known ones such as "Cliff Palace" and "Balcony House". Unfortunately, because this is the stop for the tourist hordes, this park for me has little character. You must go on a range led hike to visit most of the ruins that you can visit (actually most are not open to the public in order to preserve them for future excavation and study). The hikes are on paved paths through reconstructed ruins along carefully controlled paths. That said, there are some spectacular ruins, and given the constraints of allowing people to see the ruins while trying to preserve, them, I could not do better. The adjacent Ute Mountain Tribal Park is supposed to include more impressive ruins, but I have not been there.