Mesa Verde NP, CO

This is such an incredible park to view & spend time in. So much of what we saw was beyond description. Thousands of years of an Indian culture--their homes, lifestyle & their very existence on the cliffs of an area so remote. Yet viberant and growing at a rapid speed--only to stop--why??? The cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde are some of the most notable and best preserved in the North American Continent. Sometime during the late 1190s, after primarily living on the mesa top for 600 years, many Ancestral Puebloans began living in pueblos they built beneath the overhanging cliffs. The structures ranged in size from one-room storage units to villages of more than 150 rooms. While still farming the mesa tops, they continued to reside in the alcoves, repairing, remodeling, and constructing new rooms for nearly a century. By the late 1270s, the population began migrating south into present-day New Mexico and Arizona. By 1300, the Ancestral Puebloan occupation of Mesa Verde ended--leaving us to wonder why??

All of this would have been lost if not for President Theodore Roosevelt who in 1906 established Mesa Verde National Park to "preserve the works of man," it was the first national park of its kind. Today, the continued preservation of both cultural and natural resources is the focus of the park's research and resource management staff.

We often found ourselves trying to see "in our mind's eye" what this way of life must of looked liked--what did day in and day out bring???
We hiked into some of the ruins and were treated to a tour once we desended into the Ancestral Puebloans homes. We learned they made Mesa Verde their home from about A.D. 550 to 1300. For more than 700 years they and their descendants lived and flourished here. So much of what we saw left us wondering & yet in awe of all they acomplished.

Now, Mesa Verde National Park preserves a spectacular reminder of this ancient culture. The park contains over 4,000 known archaeological sites including cliff dwellings and the mesa top sites of pithouses, pueblos, masonry towers, and farming structures. Use the links below to learn about some of these archaeological sites. We of course were only able to view a small faction of what is available & preserved.