Lake Scott State Park
Lake Scott State Park is the site of a ruined Taos Pueblo. The Taos arrived in western Kansas in 1664. After having escaped the Spanish colonial rule in New Mexico. They formed an alliance with a group of Plains Apache. The Taos Indians built the protective pueblos and an irrigation system from a nearby spring to water their crops. The settlement, known as El Cuartelejo, was occupied for 20 years before the builders returned to their home territory. The pueblo was reoccupied in 1696 by a group of Picuri Indians. The Picuris were compelled to retreat to their homelands in colonial New Mexico ten years later.
Pueblo I Period
The most advanced communities in the Chaco Canyon region had "great houses", roads and elaborate kivas.By the Pueblo I period, the Ancient Pueblo people were reliant upon agriculture and they faced periods of lower rates of precipitation, like the major drought from 850-900 in the Petrified Forest National Park. It is likely that people also settled on the mesas and ridges to benefit from heavier winter snowfall and summer precipitation. Water management and conservation techniques, including the use of reservoirs and silt-retaining dams also emerged during this period to efficiently utilize their water supply. Large earthenware vessels, sealed with stone lids, were used to store harvested corn and protect it from rodents and rotting.