Fajada Butte, Butte in Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico, United States

Fajada Butte is a sandstone formation rising approximately 135 meters within a national park in New Mexico. The rock face includes ancient dwellings and a ceremonial ramp structure stretching about 230 meters along its southwestern side.

Pottery fragments show the cliff dwellings high on the butte were used between the 10th and 13th centuries. A 95-meter-high, 230-meter-long ramp on the southwestern face, with no apparent utilitarian purpose, points to the butte's ceremonial importance for the Chacoan people.

The Sun Dagger site near the top of the butte has two spiral petroglyphs and three large stone slabs that cast light and shadow patterns marking solstices and equinoxes. Anna Sofaer recorded the site in 1977 and saw a dagger of light bisect the larger spiral at about 11:15 am on the summer solstice. Pueblo people today still observe horizon movements of the sun.

Fajada Butte stands in Chaco Culture National Historical Park, reachable by dirt roads off US 550 near Nageezi. Access to the butte itself has been closed since the 1980s, and public entry was curtailed after 1989, when erosion from foot traffic shifted one of the three slabs at the Sun Dagger site. Visitors view the butte from the canyon floor and roads; the park's trails and sites lie at walking distance from the loop drive.

This formation gained widespread scientific attention when researchers in the 1970s discovered how precisely the petroglyphs aligned with astronomical events. The sun's path creates measurable light and shadow patterns that ancient inhabitants used to track important dates without modern instruments.