Wood Canyon Ruins
Reports were brought to the author of large ruins on the rim of Wood Canyon, about 4 miles south of Yellow Jacket post office, in October, 1918, when he had almost finished the season’s work. Two ruins of size were examined, one of which, situated in the open sagebrush clearing, belongs to the village type composed of large and small rectangular mounds. The other is composed of small circular or semicircular buildings with a surrounding wall. The form of this latter ([fig. 2]) would seem to place it in a subgroup or village type. Approach to the inclosed circular mounds was debarred by a high bluff of a canyon on one side and by a low defensive curved wall (E), some of the stones of which are large, almost megaliths, on the side of the mesa. From fragmentary sections of the buried walls of one of these circular mounds (A, B), which appear on the surface, it would seem that the buildings were like towers (C, D). This is one of the few known examples of circular buildings in an area protected by a curved wall. In the cliffs below Wood Canyon Ruin is a cliff-dwelling (G, H, J) remarkable mainly in its site.
Fig. 2.—Ground plan of Wood Canyon Ruin.
Butte Ruin
The so-called Butte Ruin, situated in Lost Canyon, 5 miles east of Dolores, belongs to the circular type. It crowns a low elevation, steep on the west side, sloping more gradually on the east, and surrounded by cultivated fields. The view from its top looking toward Ute Mountain and the Mesa Verde plateau is particularly extensive. The butte is forested by a few spruces growing at the base and extending up the sides, which are replaced at the summit by a thick growth of sage and other bushes which cover the mound, rendering it difficult to make out the ground plan of the ruin on its top.
From what appears on the surface it would seem that this ruin was a circular or semicircular building about 60 feet in diameter, the walls rising about 10 feet high. Like other circular mounds it shows a well-marked depression in the middle, from which radiate walls or indications of walled compartments. Like the majority of the buildings of the circular form, the walls on one side have fallen, suggesting that a low straight wall, possibly with rectangular rooms, was annexed to this side.
In the neighborhood of Butte Ruin there is another hill crowned with a pile of stones, probably a round building of smaller size and with more dilapidated walls. Old cedar beams project in places out of the mounds.
The cliff-houses below the largest of these mounds show well-made walls with a few rafters and beams. There are pictographs on the cliff a short distance away.