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Here is an overall view of Pueblo Bonito and the more than three acres it covers. The panels in front of you describe the construction sequences. An existing southeast-facing pueblo was used as the nucleus for the grander multi-storied Pueblo Bonito. The symmetry of the ground plan indicates that a well-conceived basic plan was adhered to throughout three generations of remodeling and enlarging.
We don’t know the exact number of rooms the pueblo contained because many of the upper walls had fallen during the centuries it stood empty and abandoned, but sections of the rear wall were known to be five stories high, and some estimates run to 800 rooms. However, many of the rooms in the older section were trash-filled to serve as footings for the rooms above, and other rooms were destroyed to clear space for kivas, and it is probable that no more than 600 rooms were usable at any one time. The excavator, Judd, estimated a population of 1,000.
From here, too, you can see the pueblo in relation to its canyon setting and to some of its sister communities. The deep arroyo in the middle of the floodplain was probably a shallow streambed bordered by sedges, willows, and cottonwoods. Otherwise the environment was not much different from what we know today. Garden plots, irrigated both from the arroyo and by runoff water from the cliffs, covered much of the canyon bottom.
A relatively smaller population of Anasazi had inhabited the canyon for at least 500 years when, with the building of Pueblo Bonito and other large communal houses, the population was greatly swelled. The increased demands for wood and water, more intensive cultivation, and the heavy foot traffic on friable soil undoubtedly placed a strain on the environment, but the deterioration of resources alone doesn’t explain the total abandonment of the area at about A.D. 1300. It is likely that there were political, or other social factors involved whose traces are hard to find in the archeological remains.
