Target House Ruins are some of the best known ruins in Cedar Mesa.  The trail is rather easy and the ruins are amazing to see in person.  The ruins are inside a small alcove that the Ancestral Pueblo filled with several rooms built from rock and a type of mortar.  The ruins are easy to get to and it won’t take more than 1.5 hrs roundtrip if you are pressed for time.  There are many hidden secrets in this small narrow canyon and this guide will take you to just about everything you can see near Target House.

The trailhead is right off the side of the road.  There is a fee station along with envelopes, so make sure to carry some cash or checks.  You won’t see a trailhead sign that says “Target House Ruins” or anything like that, so make sure you are at the right trailhead before departing.  Make sure to close the gate too!  The trail is mostly on sand and dirt.  We discovered the trail was very narrow and there were some branches and logs that got in our way – nothing serious though.

The trail quickly descends a little ways into the canyon.  It’s not really a canyon in the same sense as what you are probably thinking as what would be typical for this area, but it’s more like a ravine or gulley.  There are tons of tall cottonwood trees here and you may even see some water in the creek.  We visited in late fall and didn’t find any water, of course.  The cottonwood trees provided plenty of shade while hiking through this area.

After about 1/4 of a mile, stay left.  There will be a faint trail leading right, but I’m not sure where it goes.  Stay left and continue hiking.

You won’t be finding any cairns or trail markers during this hike, so you will need to have some decent route finding skills in order to get there.  Or, you could just use our GPS coordinates and Trail Map to help you find your way.  Target House Ruins aren’t difficult to find, but even though I had a GPS coordinate for the ruins, we skipped the turn until we realized and had to backtrack a little bit.

At about 0.65 mile hiking, there is an area with a very small rock scramble on your left.  It was easy, but if you have very young kids, they may not like this part and you may not like them climbing up.  Either way, it’s not difficult and you will be hiking on a sandstone dry wash until the ruins.

The ruins are at the back of this little canyon.  It’s about another 1/10 of a mile.  Target House Ruins are on your right in an alcove about 30 ft off the ground.  You may wonder how they got up there.  Well, if you look on the ground just below the ruins on the far right side, you will see two large holes in the ground.  It’s obvious that these two holes were hand carved by the Ancestral Pueblo peoples who lived here before.  They would put a ladder in the holes so the ladder wouldn’t slide out or fall down.  It’s impossible to get into the ruins now, but you can get all the good views you want by hiking up the small hill next to Target House Ruins. 

If you look on the left side of the ruins, you will see a painted white target.  It’s not a target in the sense that modern people would know, but rather, it’s concentric circles that would have an all different meaning to the Pueblo people. 

You will notice an enclosed structure in the ruins with wood still sticking out of the top.  It’s amazing to think that these structures are probably over 1,000 years old and are still in great shape!  The front of this enclosed structure used to have white paint on it too.  It also looks like it had a painted white target.

On top of the hill and in an alcove you can see other ruins and even some petroglyphs.  This is an active archeological area, so please do not cross over the chain fence.  Please be respectful and enjoy these ruins from a distance.

Another ruin can be seen just below the upper alcove.  You can see the black smoke stains on the rock from ancient fires.