Tabira ( Pueblo Blanco), Pueblo Colorado Ruins - Cibola National Forest

They say "getting there is half the fun." For me it's more like figuring out how to get there. Since there is so much secrecy and such surrounding un-manned archaeological sites the  general process runs like this:
1. Come across a clue or have an idea  that something exists.
2. Research to confirm it does actually exist.
3. Do research to find out where it does really exist.
4. Do more research to be really sure of the actual place where it exists.
5. Figure out the best, easiest and quickest way to get to that place.
7. Go.
8. Get thrown off by non-existent roads, locked gates, missing landmarks etc.
9. Find alternate route to place.
10. Arrive
 In specific while looking back on our trip to Chupadera Mesa last year, and trying to figure out the name of the canyon we hiked in, I saw a nearby place called Mesa de los Jumanos. Since Chupadera  Mesa is a type locality of certain pottery sherds, and since the Gran Quivira mission and pueblo ruins are nearby, I figured this Mesa de los Jumanos might have something to offer.
 I was off and running. Finding  an old Forest Service booklet online gave me the names of two places: Tabira  or Pueblo Blanco and Pueblo Colorado. Doing more searches and then hitting the maps, I saw there was  a Pueblo Blanco Canyon, a Ruins Windmill, and Ruins Tank. Pretty good indications that the ruins were nearby. Fairly quickly I found the ruins site on Google Earth.
 The second pueblo was more tricky. In that case the map and On-X indicated ruins on a small mesa ( sitting on top of the much larger Jumanos Mesa).  I couldn't really see on Google Earth where there was any ruin that would fit the bill of the large Pueblo Colorado I had read about. I kept looking along the  road that leads to the little mesa. Nothing. On top of the hill there seemed to be an area of ruins, but it was very small. I finally went back to the Forest Service booklet, and figured out from a description I had overlooked that the ruin on the mesa was southeast of Pueblo Colorado and is only called LA 2091 in the pamphlet but is also referred to as Pueblo( or Pueblito) de la Mesa. It was quick enough work to find larger ruins area now.
 Off we went on Sunday morning,  with my route going as planned until we hit a " Private Road " sign well before entering the forest. Now we had to backtrack, planning on the fly our new route.
 It went remarkably well. There was a few bits of confusion, but nothing that got us way off track or took up too much time. My original plan had been to approach from the south and see the mesa top ruin and Pueblo Colorado first. Now we were coming into the forest from the east, so we decided to look at Tabira first. The road situation was a little strange  as we were getting close, it split into two routes with a barbed wire fence in the middle. They ran mostly parallel. At a gate( not locked), we realized  the route we were on, would diverge( using On-X) from the ruin. We also realized we were really close, so we parked, got through the fence and walked the short distance on the opposite road and then up a side road to the locked ruins gate ( the entire pueblo area is fenced), where there is one of those V-shaped hiker entrances. We came up to a very nice informative, well preserved sign, which seemed strange as I am sure that very, very few people ever bother to come here.

 We read and then shortly thereafter spied our first piece of pottery.

The walls everywhere were just pile of cobbles amidst the junipers and I assumed the largest piles were the walls of the Spanish mission church on the site ( which was "lost" for hundreds of years, the center of a  fascinating archaeological mystery that was not solved until 1960).



Besides many types of native pottery, there were elaborately painted and glazed sherds that may have come from Mexico or even Spain. We wandered around in the heat (thankfully mitigated to degree by some cloud cover) and humidity and then  it was back to the 4Runner to go in search of Pueblo Colorado. We arrived about a half hour later ( a 10 mile trip) with only one minor snag. We  came to a similar gate with a pedestrian entrance and were greeted by a second lovely sign and then quickly thereafter encountered the largest piece of pottery we saw at either site.




 This was a considerably larger site with many mounds covered with stubby sage within the fenced area which  had to be over two acres. I had seen a drawing of the layout of both sites but on the ground it was hard to tell where anything was, and we never could find the area that was the great kiva  on the site.

 We were at about 6500 feet elevation, but the heat ( near 90 when the clouds disappeared) coupled with the humidity felt searing.
 I looked longingly at our third destination LA 2091 that sat upon a knobby little mesa just a mile distant, knowing that with the heat and time running short, we were not going to visit  it today.
Still it was great adventure.

 NOTE: A word about the roads in this part of the forest is in order.  Even though the area is almost completely flat, the sand (more like silt, as in clay) was very deep in places and there is no doubt that these primitive two tracks become a muddy mess when wet. We know this because in many places use"ways" have become the actual road where the old route  is nothing more than a horrendous trench revealing deeply the layers of soil like an open wound on the land. Once the new route gets established it appears that the Forest Service or  the rancher comes in and cuts the juniper and piñon branches ( there was dead brush everywhere)  on either side to make it look more official. You definitely will need four-wheel drive if there has been snow or rain, so perhaps Spring and Fall may be the best times to visit.