Welcome to Chaco Canyon ~ Kanab Utah

Since the early 1900's, the Swapp family has run cattle on their ranch surrounding the city of Kanab. The ranch, in those early times, extended from the White Cliffs and Kanab Creek to the north and to the Vermillion area to the east and to the BLM bluffs to the west of Kanab.

The ranch included some of the most beautiful land in ‘Color Country’ the heart of the legendary ‘Grand Circle’ of Southern Utah. But the Swapps weren’t the first to carve out an existence in this harsh, but strikingly gorgeous landscape.

Over 2,000 years ago (about 100 B.C.) a band of original settlers known as Basketmaker II occupied this same land. What they called home included the land bordering Kanab Creek as it passed through what is now the City of Kanab. These were the early Anasazi, who hunted, farmed, built their pit-houses and kivas and lived atop of the ruins of their ancestors. The Anasazi spent the next 1,200 to 1,300 years on this land spanning the entire agricultural period and then mysteriously disappeared altogether about 750 years ago.

Evidence of their settlement is obvious to the naked eye as one walks where pithouse depressions are still visible today. Looters have taken pottery shards and arrowheads from the soil for years. The real treasure, though, lies another 6 to 10 feet beneath the surface where the Basketmaker II people built their dwellings of stone some 2,000 years ago.

Today the ranch is bordered by development on three sides. 270 acres of the ranch land was purchased by Southern Utah developer Milo McCowan in 2005. McCowan’s intentions are to create a unique private community where the highest priority is the preservation of these ancient sites.

Retired BLM Chief Archaeologist, Doug McFadden, was commissioned by Savage Point Inc, the developer, to do an initial inventory of all significant historical features. Doug will work with Savage Point, throughout the process of excavation and cataloging of artifacts and the preservation of each and every site.

Savage Point will build a museum to preserve all significant finds and create the community of Chaco Canyon with protection of all historical areas by placing them in designated, protected deeded parks. This process will afford people with an interest in archaeology to be able to live in a community and work alongside professionally trained archaeologists as history unfolds, layer by layer, literally in their own back yard.

Excavation of protected historical areas near access points will begin the summer of 2007 with installation of infrastructure starting later in the year. The first homes in Chaco Canyon should be available in 2008. The master community will feature many different types of housing options ranging from attached townhouses to large private lots. All owners will be members of the Chaco Canyon Homeowner’s Association which will manage the community’s landscaping and various parks, trail systems and amenities.

Any developer can enter land, grade the surface, install utilities and create lots. It takes a different type of developer to look at the aesthetic and historical value of the land first and then tailor the development around that which matters most. Chaco Canyon will serve as a legacy of, and benchmark for, the field of environmental and historical land development.

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