Hosta Butte is an ancestral site southwest of

Chaco Culture National Historical Park Chaco Culture National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park in the American Southwest hosting a large concentration of pre-Columbian indigenous ruins of pueblos. The park is located in northwestern New Mexico, betwee ...

, New Mexico. Along with Gobernador Knob and Huérfano Mountain, it forms part of the

Dinétah Dinétah is the traditional homeland or country of the Navajo people, Diné or Navajo, an Native Americans in the United States, Indigenous people of the Southwestern United States. In the Navajo language, the word means "among the people" or ...

, considered to be the birthplace of early

Navajo The Navajo or Diné are an Indigenous people of the Southwestern United States. Their traditional language is Diné bizaad, a Southern Athabascan language. The states with the largest Diné populations are Arizona (140,263) and New Mexico (1 ...

culture. The mountain, with an elevation of , is in close proximity to

Crownpoint, New Mexico Crownpoint () is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) on the Navajo Nation in McKinley County, New Mexico. The population was 2,900 at the time of the 2020 census, up from 2,278 in 2010. It is located along the Trail o ...

. Due to its prominence in the cosmography of Native tribes in the area, the mountain contains a number of small shrines. In 1877, photographer

William Henry Jackson William Henry Jackson (April 4, 1843 – June 30, 1942) was an American photographer, American Civil War, Civil War veteran, painter, and an explorer famous for his images of the American West. He was a great-great nephew of Samuel Wilson, t ...

named the butte in honor of

Francisco Hosta Francisco Hosta was the civil governor of Jemez Pueblo in 1849. He acted as a guide for several archeological expeditions to the Ancestral Puebloan ruins in Chaco Canyon, including the Simpson group in 1849, one led by Dr. Oscar Lowe in 1874, and in ...

, who guided him to the

Ancestral Puebloan The Ancestral Puebloans, also known as Ancestral Pueblo peoples or the Basketmaker-Pueblo culture, were an ancient Native American culture of Pueblo peoples spanning the present-day Four Corners region of the United States, comprising southe ...

ruins in Chaco Canyon. Uranium mining is exploited in the area, over some 3,020 acres, and forms part of the Grants Uranium Belt.

References

;Bibliography * Chaco Culture National Historical Park Mountains of New Mexico Uranium mining in the United States Mountains of McKinley County, New Mexico {{NewMexico-geo-stub