Let's Just Go Somewhere: Mesa Verde NP

We headed out early for a day trip to Mesa Verde National Park. The entrance to the park was within about 10 miles of the campground.

We stopped at the new visitor center located just inside the entrance of the park to pick up a map of the park and decide where to go first. And then we began the long, curvy, but scenic drive back to the cliff-house pueblo dwellings.

We climbed up and around Lookout Point (8,427 ft)...

...and then passed by Montezuma Valley Overlook where we could see the town of Cortez and the surrounding valley below.

We continued up and down and around the North Rim of the plateau.

At the top of the plateau, we could see evidence of a very destructive forest fire.

This fire was so hot and destructive that it not only destroyed the trees but also the seeds that would restart the forest.

After walking through the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum and watching a movie about the Ancestral Pueblo people, we walked out to the beginning of the trail where we could see Spruce Tree House on the other side of the canyon.

The paved trail was a series of switchbacks down into the canyon...

and then a short, gradual climb...

...to the Spruce Tree House cliff-dwelling community.

The Ancestral Puebloan people lived in this region for over 700 years beginning around 550 AD. Around 1200 AD, they began to build their villages beneath the overhanging cliffs. They lived in the cliff dwellings for less than 100 years and by 1300 AD, Mesa Verde was deserted. One theory for their leaving was possibly a severe drought that occurred during the last quarter of the 1200s. Another theory was social and political problems, or maybe the people just looked for new opportunities elsewhere.

Whatever the reason, the Ancestral Puebloan people left an architectural and archeological marvel behind. The cliff dwellings remained unknown until local ranchers discovered them in the 1880s. Since then, archeologists have sought to understand the lives of the people who lived here.

(The above information was taken from the park brochure.)

A very nice park ranger was at the Spruce Tree House to answer any questions we might have.

This community was estimated to be home to about 80 people.

The park has restored and rebuilt an underground kiva that we were able to climb down into.

Chuck was surprised I would climb down into the kiva given my claustrophobia.

The kivas had fresh-air ducts where the air would be pulled in from the top...

...and down into the kiva.

The smoke from a fire would go up through the opening where the ladder was located. Today, most people would not like being in all that smoke; but the Puebloan people as did many Native Americans believed that smoke was purifying.

The kivas also had shelves and little cubby hole storage areas...

...and wooden roofs like the one rebuilt here.

Here is the view from the top of another kiva without a ceiling.

On display, were grinding stones where the women would spend most of the day grinding corn.

On the underneath ledge, we could see the smoke stains still on the ceiling from their fires 800 years ago.

We were amazed at the innovation of the Ancestral Puebloan people.

There were very few visitors today at Mesa Verde NP. In fact, I was the first customer of the day at the park's cafe and gift shop and it was 11:30 in the morning! The park ranger told us that during the summer, the park gets as many as 2,000 visitors a day! Glad we came when we did!

When we got back to the beginning of the trail, we looked back at Spruce Tree House...

...and observed other structures built into the ledges out to the side of the Spruce Tree House community that were thought to have been used for storage.

After leaving Spruce Tree House, we drove out to Cliff Palace, another nearby cliff-dwelling community that was estimated to have had about 120 residents.

Below is a picture of Cliff Palace taken soon after it was discovered in the late 1800's.

Notice the guy sitting on this tower in the old picture...

...and compare that tower with the restored tower today.

After we left Cliff Palace, Chuck noticed this big spider crossing the road. We stopped to take a picture. It was big and hairy so we think it was a tarantula.

The last cliff dwelling we saw was Hemenway House. Hemenway House was named after Mary Tileston Hemenway who financially supported the first archeological research in the southwest. We pulled off at the overlook and looked way across the canyon trying to find the cliff dwelling.