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Poshuouinge Ruins, Abiquiu

4.4
Ruin · Hidden Gem · Tourist Spot
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Poshuouinge is a large ancestral Pueblo ruin located on U.S. Route 84, about south of Abiquiu, New Mexico. Its builders were the ancestors of the Tewa Pueblos who now reside in Santa Clara Pueblo and San Juan Pueblo. It has also been referred to informally as Turquoise Ruin, although there is no evidence that turquoise has ever been found in the area. Poshuouinge is situated upstream and due west of another Tewa Pueblo ancestral site, Tsama.
Poshuouinge was built on a high mesa, some above the Chama River, around 1400. There are two springs located about to the south of the ruins which are believed to have been the main water sources for the habitation. It is accessible by a United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service trail.
This city, at its largest, consisted of about 700 ground floor rooms, most being two or even three stories tall. The city was laid out with two main plazas, and a large kiva near the center of the eastern courtyard. The barrow pits of Poshuouinge were planted with small stone grids in the basement.
The city is believed to have been occupied between 1375 and 1475. The site was abandoned around 1500, well before Coronado and the first Europeans arrived. It is believed that its inhabitants left the banks of the Chama River and relocated nearby around the Rio Grande, where their descendants live today.
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Poshuouinge Ruins reviews

TripAdvisor traveler rating
TripAdvisor traveler rating 4.0
28 reviews
Google
5.0
TripAdvisor
  • This is a relatively little-visited Puebloan site reachable by trail from the small parking lot on US 84. (Directions say it's south of the Abiquiu Inn, as indeed it is, but the key thing to watch... 
    This is a relatively little-visited Puebloan site reachable by trail from the small parking lot on US 84. (Directions say it's south of the Abiquiu Inn, as indeed it is, but the key thing to watch...  more »
  • The informational plaques made us feel like we were going back in time. It was a nice short hike, a bit of a hill to get to the top. We had the place to ourselves. Enjoyed imagining what it must have....  more
    The informational plaques made us feel like we were going back in time. It was a nice short hike, a bit of a hill to get to the top. We had the place to ourselves. Enjoyed imagining what it must have....  more »
  • This is a lovely way to get in touch with those who were here first. The trail is easy to follow and the signposts along the way give you a sense of what life was like there in when natives lived... 
    This is a lovely way to get in touch with those who were here first. The trail is easy to follow and the signposts along the way give you a sense of what life was like there in when natives lived...  more »
Google
  • Totally off the beaten trail, but well worth the stop for the landscape views. This site is considered to be an ancestral Pueblo to modern Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo in the nearby Española Valley. Although the walls have long since fallen, a visitor can still see the footprint of the structure in the long, low rectangular mounds that show where they once stood, and still see bits of pottery and flaked stone made during the manufacture of stone tools. You can look, but please don’t take anything but pictures.

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