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.
San Juan River (Colorado River tributary)
The San Juan River and its tributaries were an important water source for Native Americans as early as 10,000 BC, when Paleo-Indians inhabited the Four Corners region. By 500 BC–450 AD, the Basketmaker culture was succeeded by the Ancestral Puebloans or Anasazi who developed distinctive irrigation methods and masonry architecture ("pueblos"); many ruins and sites are preserved in the San Juan watershed in places such as Mesa Verde National Park. Most settlements were concentrated along the upper San Juan River in New Mexico, where the terrain is gentler and water more abundant. The lower San Juan River in Utah flows through inaccessible canyons that largely precluded habitation. Starting around 1300 AD, a warming climate brought long droughts to the area, forcing the Puebloans to abandon their settlements north of the San Juan River, and eventually causing them to migrate out of the San Juan River basin to the Rio Grande Valley, where their descendants live today.