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Pueblo Pintado [Spanish for "Painted Town"] is a large Chacoan great
house located about three miles east of the head of Chaco Canyon and about sixteen miles east of Pueblo Bonito. Built on the summit of a rounded ridge, the site is visible for
miles from most directions and was the first great house encountered by all of the early expeditions that approached Chaco Canyon from the
east. It is sometimes called a Chacoan outlier but is actually within the Chaco Core.
Pueblo Pintado is L-shaped with a central room block and a west wing, but no east wing. The arc of rooms that encloses the plaza on
the south continues to the east, thereby creating an east "side" to the structure. It covers less ground area than most canyon great houses but has slightly more rooms
(135 total) than Pueblo Alto. The pueblo rose to three stories, and possibly four. Unlike most great houses, the plaza contains a large mound that probably represents the
remains of a room block. A later Navajo corral was built southeast of the structure in the vicinity of a large trash mound.
Construction appears to have started at Pueblo Pintado in the 1060s and probably continued
through the late 1000s. The site has not been excavated, and few tree-ring dates have been collected. A community of more than thirty small house sites encircles the great
house. At least one Chacoan Road is present, the East or Pintado-Chaco Road, which begins near the southwest corner of the great house
and runs west to the head of Chaco Canyon.
Pueblo Pintado is located about 2 miles off BIA Highway 9 via dirt roads that are un-numbered.
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