The Great American Engineers You Never Learned About

Download this free activity to guide your students through the investigation of Chaco Canyon.

If you asked your students to name some of the U.S.’s most famous monuments, you'd expect to hear the usual suspects: the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, the Washington Monument.

But here's a history mystery for your students:

What if one of America's greatest engineering achievements was built nearly 1,000 years ago by people most of us never learned about in school?

The answer takes us to Chaco Canyon, a remote desert canyon in northwestern New Mexico where the Ancestral Pueblo people built an astonishing network of Great Houses, roads, and structures.

To get there, you leave the pavement behind and drive nearly 20 miles down a lonely, rocky washboard road that hardly seems like the route to one of the greatest archaeological sites in the Western Hemisphere.

But it is.

I visited Chaco Canyon a few years ago. I rented a four-wheel-drive pickup because everyone said I'd need it. As we bounced down the endless bumpy dirt road, I looked at my wife, my daughter, and my best friend's daughter and started feeling guilty.

"This better be worth it," I thought. Was this another one of my bad dad vacation decisions?

Then we arrived, and all doubt disappeared.

Nearly 1,000 years ago, the Ancestral Pueblo people transformed this remote desert canyon into an engineering marvel. They built five-story Great Houses with hundreds of rooms, and they hauled massive timbers from distant mountains without animals, wagons, or wheels.

They engineered remarkably straight roads that stretched for hundreds of miles across deserts and mesas. They carefully aligned buildings and roads with the movements of the sun and moon with astonishing precision.

Standing there, it was impossible not to ask one question: Why don't more people know this story?

These were some of the greatest engineers in American history. Yet their accomplishments rarely appear in classrooms.

History is at its best when it surprises us. Few discoveries surprise students more than realizing that Native Americans were not only skilled hunters, farmers, and artists, but also engineers, architects, astronomers, planners, and innovators who solved enormous problems with creativity and determination.

That's why 241 Books created 100% History Detectives: The Talking Rocks of Chaco Canyon.

We didn't want students to simply read about Chaco Canyon. We wanted them to investigate it.

In 241 Book’s robust reading + social studies unit, students annotate engaging text, analyze fascinating artifacts, debate evidence, and try to solve several of the greatest mysteries in American history.

One of my favorite parts of the unit is its Hands-On History activity.

Students examine artifacts: buffalo robes, snow goggles, dugout canoes, turquoise jewelry—examples of Native American ingenuity from all across North America.

And they are prompted to ask questions. Where is it from? What was it used for? They build theories, defend their thinking with evidence, and then revise their ideas, just like real historians and archaeologists.

By the end of the investigation, students haven't just learned about Chaco Canyon. They've also learned about Native Americans on the Great Plains, along the Eastern Seaboard, and in frozen parts of Alaska.

And they've discovered these places and objects for themselves. In a learning sense, they own them. 

Discovery lessons like this one are the ones students remember. They're the lessons that make social studies their favorite subject.

If you're looking for a way to introduce Native American history that builds reading comprehension, teaches historical thinking, sparks rich classroom discussions, and leaves students amazed by some of America's oldest and greatest inventions and inventors, I think you'll love 100% History Detectives: The Talking Rocks of Chaco Canyon.

It's one of the units we're most proud of.

Free This Week

Want to see how the student investigation works?

Download our Hands-On History: Chaco Canyon Artifact Investigation absolutely free.

And if they love that mystery activity, 241 Books has a robust week-long history mystery unit waiting for them. In fact, we have a whole year of mysteries lined up. Check it out!

Steve Seely | Co-founder, 241 Books