Atlas Obscura Itineraries

Red Rock Over Time: A Road Trip Through Native American History

The Four Corners region of the American Southwest—where New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah converge—contains the highest concentration of Indigenous peoples in the United States, and the most extensive and best-preserved record of pre-Columbian civilization anywhere north of Mexico. The Ancestral Puebloans built a road network that stretched 400 miles from a canyon in northwestern New Mexico, with remnants that you can still explore today. The Navajo Nation, at 27,000 square miles, is the largest Native American territory in the country and is still home to more than 170,000 people. Taos Pueblo has been continuously inhabited for more than 1,000 years and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. These are not archaeological remains of a vanished civilization. They are places where people live, pray, govern, trade, and make art today exactly as they have done for millennia. This three-day road trip connects eight sites running north from Albuquerque through the heart of the Four Corners to Mesa Verde. It is a route through Indigenous history that is also a route through the Indigenous present.