Mesa Verde

Thursday, October 24
Mesa Verde National Park is located about 10 minutes east of Cortez, CO. The Park was created in 1906 to preserve archaeological sites of Ancestral Peobloans. The Park protects over 4,500 archaeological sites including 600 cliff dwellings. This is a huge park and it takes well over an hour just to make it to the first site. Much of the park closes in mid-October so we were a bit restricted as to what we could see, but to give the whole park a real good look would take several days and we only had one so we saw what we could. And that was a LOT!

Our first stop after the Visitor Center was Park Peak. The views from here are incredible. You can see for miles.

Sculpture outside the visitor center shows a Pueblon climbing a rock with a sack of corn on his back.

We are driving to the top of that mesa.

Climbing higher.

We went over and under mountains.

The view from the peak. The snow-covered mountains of Colorado.

The road up the mesa.

The fire watch tower at the top.

The view to New Mexico.

The view to the west and southern Colorado. Cortez is in the valley.

A number of fires have swept across the park. The fire watch tower was wrapped in a reflective material to prevent the tower from burning. It worked!

The Oak trees are starting to come back. the last fire was nearly 20 years ago n this area. The new growth is nearly as tall as the skeletal trees burned in the last fire.

We made a lot of stops along the way. Settlements here started around 500 AD and continue until roughly 1300 AD. At that point the settlements were abandoned for reasons still debated in scientific circles. As with nearly all these type of sites, restoration work has taken place. The structures are accurate but after several hundred years a bit of maintenance is certainly required. Old mortar has been replaced and rocks put back in their original positions.

The pit houses are the oldest in the park. They pre-date the stone houses.

These next sites are newer than the pit houses but still older than the cliff dwellings that were all stone.

Cliff Palace site. One of the most recent and largest structure.

Sun Palace

A large group escorted by a Ranger

Cedar Tree Tower. Likely used for ceremonies.

Far View Sites. A series of five different structures.

This is a water reservoir. Lined with stone and dirt walls, it was used for hundreds of years.

We drove all the loops that we could and stopped at all the overlooks and took some of the smaller hikes. A long day but well worth the effort. Mesa Verde is definitely a must-see. The restored ruins are very well done but remember they are restored and not really in original condition. This is actually a good thing as weather and time would have nearly destroyed the original buildings. They are a thousand years old remember.

Friday we pack up and head to Aztec, NM for a couple of days before heading further south.

......and that was Our View From Here!