Moonrise over Spruce Tree House. Image from the National Park Service
For more than 700 years, Ancestral Pueblo people built thriving communities on the mesas and in the cliffs of Mesa Verde. The park now protects the cultural heritage of 26 tribes. It is a World Heritage Site and an International Dark Sky Park, and home to more than a thousand species — several found nowhere else on earth.
From pithouses to cliff villages
| When | What |
|---|---|
| About 550 CE | Ancestral Pueblo people arrive — skilled basketweavers, later potters, a nomadic people settling down. They farm beans, corn and squash, gather wild plants and hunt deer, rabbits, squirrels and other game, living in pithouses dug into the mesatops or sometimes in cliff alcoves |
| Later | a growing population builds larger adobe houses — pueblos |
| By 1000 | multi-story houses of shaped stone |
| 1100–1300 | Mesa Verde's population reaches several thousand, mostly in compact, many-roomed villages |
| Late 1100s | some people move back into the cliff alcoves |
| Late 1190s–late 1270s | most cliff dwellings are built |
| 1280s | building here stops; it continues to the south |
| End of the 13th century | the region is almost empty |
The cliff dwellings range from one room to villages of more than 150 rooms, such as Cliff Palace and Long House. Builders shaped them to fit each alcove, using sandstone blocks and mud mortar. A living room averaged about six by eight feet — room for two or three people; smaller rooms at the back and upstairs were probably for storage. Most villages had underground kivas, thought to be ceremonial chambers.
Why they left
The 1200s brought upheaval across the Pueblo world. Many people moved into larger, better-protected communities — some from the mesa tops into cliff dwellings — while others left the region altogether. Archeological evidence points to long droughts, dwindling resources and social upheaval. Nobody knows for certain: crop failures, worn-out soils, forests and game, or political trouble and the pull of new opportunities may all have played a part.
They went south, to kin already living in Arizona and New Mexico — toward today's Pueblos on the Hopi mesas and along the Rio Grande and its tributaries. Their homes, villages and belongings remain across the Four Corners.
Visiting
Start at the Mesa Verde Visitor and Research Center at the park entrance. On the drive in, the Montezuma Valley, Park Point and Geologic overlooks show the lay of the land. Most ancestral sites open to visitors are on two mesas; in summer, plan time for both.
Chapin Mesa — the busiest:
- Cliff Palace, Balcony House and Spruce Tree House — among the largest cliff dwellings, and not typical: most alcove sites have around ten rooms, these have many rooms and kivas.
- The Far View sites, the Chapin Mesa Museum, and the Mesa Top Loop Road, a self-guided drive past mesa-top sites and views of the cliff dwellings, with an audio tour narrated by Park Ranger TJ Atsye (Laguna Pueblo).
- The historic Mesa Verde Administrative District, a National Historic Landmark, with food and restrooms.
Wetherill Mesa — quieter, seasonal (closed in winter), reached by a spur road from Far View:
- Long House, its largest cliff dwelling, by ticketed ranger-guided tour.
- Step House, where visitors can see both dwellings from the 600s and a pueblo from the 1220s, when Ancestral Pueblo people moved back in.
- Fewer services — just a snack bar — so bring snacks, water and sun protection.
Overnight, there is the Far View Lodge and the Morefield Campground.
Getting there: off US Route 160, 10 miles east of Cortez, Colorado.
Preservation
A Save America's Treasures grant, which helps preserve nationally significant historic places and collections, paid for conserving several cliff dwellings in 1999. The park's sites are recorded by the Historic American Buildings Survey and Historic American Engineering Record, and it appears in the National Park Service's American Southwest travel itinerary.
Sources
Based on "Colorado: Mesa Verde National Park," National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. A misspelling in the source ("undergound") is corrected.
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.nps.gov
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