Drought, shortened growing seasons, and late and early frosts created hard times for Pueblo farmers, especially in southeastern Utah. In the early 1200s, villagers in Utah, including those at Edge of the Cedars Pueblo, probably moved short distances east to places such as Hovenweep and Mesa Verde. By the mid-1200s, those settlements were strained by larger populations and increased demands on resources. Multi-year droughts in the 1250s and 1270s then compelled Ancestral Pueblo villagers to make major moves south, probably joining family and allies in successful towns along the Rio Grande in modern-day New Mexico and along the Little Colorado drainages at Zuni and Hopi. More than 20 modern Pueblo communities in Arizona and New Mexico trace their ancestry to the corn-growing Ancestral Pueblo people who left the Four Corners region in the 1200s.