Mesa Verde, Colorado

About 550 AD, before Europeans explored North America, some of the people living in the Four Corners region decided to move onto the Mesa Verde. For over 700 years these people and their descendants lived and flourished here, eventually building elaborate stone communities in the sheltered alcoves of the canyon walls.


After entering the park you drive up and over the top of a mesa and then down and up again to arrive at the place whee the cliff dwellings are found. Ancestral Pueblo people grew crops and hunted on the mesa tops. Hand-and-toe hold trails connected the mesa top fields to the alcove villages below.

This is Spruce Tree House, the best preserved cliff dwelling. In the mid 1200's it had 130 rooms and 60-90 people lived here.

This is a view of Spruce Tree House from the opposite side of the gorge separating these two parts of the mesa. From this point there is a winding trail that crosses to the opposite side. There is a spruce/piñon pine forest on top of the mesa.

Archaeologists called the people who lived here Anasazi, from a Navajo word sometimes translated as "the ancient foreigners." Now they are called Ancestral Pueblo people, to reflect their modern descendants.

The Kiva is a round chamber, usually underground built in almost every village or homesite. They were likely used for combined religious, social and utilitarian purposes. Entry was by ladder through a hole in the center of the roof. The word Kiva comes from the Hopi language. In modern Pueblo communities the kiva is still an important ceremonial structure.

The hole in the center is the fire-pit. The rectangular opening behind it is the ventilator for smoke from the fire.

Fire destroyed much of the vegetation on top of the mesa. Grasses and flowers have regrown, but the trees will take more time.

Views of cliff dwellings from across the gorge are impressive. Imagine climbing down from the top of the mesa to take crops to your home.

Ancestral Pueblo people lived in the cliff dwellings for less than 100 years. By about 1300 Mesa Verde was deserted. The last quarter of the 1200's saw drought and crop failures and maybe they had depleted the land and its soils, forests and animals after years of intensive use. Maybe there were social and political problems and maybe the people simply looked for new opportunities elsewhere, no one really knows whey they left. Local ranchers reported the cliff dwellings in the 1880's while looking for lost cattle.



Since the discovery of the cliff dwellings, archeologists have sought to understand the lives of the people who lived there. Despite decades of excavation knowledge is incomplete. The people  who lived there were adept at building, artistic in their crafts and skillful at making a living from a difficult land.

Information from the brochure published by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.
Photos taken by Don & Patsy Bohlen