Pueblo Bonito is the largest and best-known great house in Chaco Culture National Historical Park, in San Juan County, northern New Mexico. Ancestral Puebloans occupied it from AD 828 to 1126, and the National Park Service says it was planned and built in stages between AD 850 and 1150. It covers about three acres and had roughly 800 rooms. Some sections rose four or five stories, and the walls reached about three feet thick.
Two Great Kivas flank a precisely aligned north-south wall through the central plaza, and more than thirty other kivas have been found. Room 33, from the earliest phase, served as an elite crypt where fourteen people were buried over about 330 years.
Richard Wetherill and George H. Pepper excavated from 1896 to 1900 and uncovered 190 rooms. In January 1941 a section of the cliff known as Threatening Rock fell and destroyed part of the rear wall.
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