Around 900 years ago, as the growth of the village on Unkar delta outpaced its farming output, a group of Ancestral Puebloans established a summer residence up here on the rim – likely migrating up to plant as the snow melted and returning to the canyon bottom at summer's end. It's a tiny site with only the remains of foundations to look at, but it's still worth pausing here to imagine life in this challenging land.
The four main rooms and five smaller storage areas housed about 20 people on and off for almost a century. Over 100 farming sites scattered across the Walhalla Plateau and remains of storage areas on nearby sky islands (plateaus of rock separated from the mainland that offer some protection from marauding critters) indicate an extensive agricultural operation that may have helped feed the main community down by the river.
Excavations reveal that the site was occupied long before the masonry construction, and the compound was built over time through successive additions. Some rooms at Walhalla Glades did not have doors, likely accessed via the roof. The main structure burnt down late during its occupation, followed by construction of more hastily built structures nearby – almost as if they knew they wouldn't be staying much longer.
