Pueblo of Acoma

Acoma Pueblo sits on top of a sheer sandstone mesa that rises roughly 365 feet (about 110 m) out of the desert valley of western New Mexico, and from below its houses look almost like an extension of the rock itself. The Acoma people call the place Haak'u, and the village on the summit is widely known as Sky City. It counts among the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States: the Acoma date its founding to the 11th century, and archaeological evidence places the settlement on the mesa at least by the 13th century.

The village is laid out in three long rows of apartment-like houses, each up to three storeys high and facing south. They are built of adobe brick, with timber beams carrying roofs of poles, brush and plaster, and the roof of one level serves as the terrace of the next. Traditionally the rooms had no ground-floor doors or windows and were entered by ladders, a design that doubled as a defence. Rainwater gathers in two natural rock cisterns, outdoor ovens stand beside the houses, and seven rectangular kivas and a central plaza remain the ceremonial heart of the community. Only a few dozen people live on the mesa year-round; most of the roughly 6,000 tribal citizens live in the surrounding reservation lands.

The largest building on the summit is the mission church of San Esteban del Rey, raised between 1629 and 1641 under the Franciscan friar Juan Ramírez. Its massive earthen walls enclose about 6,000 square feet, and the ponderosa pine beams of the roof were carried by community members from Mount Taylor, more than 40 miles away. The church stands as a reminder of a hard history: after the Spanish governor Juan de Oñate reached Acoma in 1598, a clash with his soldiers led to a punitive assault in January 1599 in which hundreds of Acoma were killed, and the pueblo later joined the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. The whole village was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1960, and in 2007 it became a National Trust Historic Site, the only Native American site with that status. Acoma is also famous for its pottery, a tradition more than a thousand years old: thin-walled vessels made from dense local clay and painted with fine geometric patterns, thunderbirds and rainbows.

Getting there

Acoma Pueblo lies about 60 miles (roughly 100 km) west of Albuquerque, reached from Interstate 40. The nearest town is Los Lunas, about 78 km away in a straight line. The nearest airport is Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ), about 90 km away. A road blasted into the rock face in the 1950s leads to the top of the mesa, and the Sky City Cultural Center, opened in 2008, stands at its foot; old footpaths down the cliff are still in use.