Pueblo Bonito (Spanish for beautiful town) is the largest and best-known great house in Chaco Culture National Historical Park, northern New Mexico.

"[1] Anthropologist Brian Fagan has said that "Pueblo Bonito is an archeological icon, as famous as England's Stonehenge, Mexico's Teotihuacan, or Peru's Machu Picchu.

The wall stood 97 feet (30 m) high and weighed approximately 30,000 tons; the Puebloans compensated by building structural reinforcements for the slab.

[3] United States army Lt. James H. Simpson and his guide, Carravahal, from San Ysidro, New Mexico, discovered Chaco Canyon during an 1849 military expedition.

[4] They briefly examined eight large ruins in Chaco Canyon, and Carravahal gave them their Spanish names, including Pueblo Bonito, meaning beautiful village.

Wetherill was required to stop his ongoing excavations on federal property, but continued to run a trading post at Chaco Canyon until his death in 1910.

Pueblo Bonito is divided into two sections by a precisely aligned wall which runs north to south through the central plaza.

[9] The site indicates the Puebloans' comprehension of solar and lunar cycles; both of which are marked in the petroglyphs of the surrounding cliff area as well as in the architecture of Pueblo Bonito itself.

Examination of pack rat middens revealed that at the time that Pueblo Bonito was built, Chaco Canyon and the surrounding areas were wooded by trees such as ponderosa pines.

This tree removal, combined with a period of drought, led the water table in the valley to drop severely, making the land infertile.

[13] He was buried with thousands of turquoise and shell beads and pendants, which originally formed necklaces, anklets and bracelets, making his the richest burial ever excavated in the Southwest.

[14][15][13] Over the next 330 years, thirteen other individuals (both men and women) were buried in the same crypt with many elite grave goods suggesting important ritual functions in the community.

Archaeologists have concluded that Pueblo Bonito was associated with an elite matriline, a powerful family who inherited their status from their mothers, for approximately 330 years.