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Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado
August 7, 2007 | 29 Comments
In Early June, we went on a roadtrip to the four national parks in Colorado. We covered 2000 miles in 9 days, and encountered some of the most spectacular sights this geologically diverse region has to offer.
Colorado Relief Map
The orange line shows the areas we drove through, beginning and ending at Denver. The dots show the four national parks we visited. The red arrow points to Mesa Verde National Park in the ‘four corners’ area, bordering Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah.
Anti-Clockwise:
Rocky Mountain National Park (Pics HERE)
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park (Pics HERE)
Mesa Verde National Park
Great Sand Dunes National Park (Pics HERE)
We also drove through the San Juan Parkway (Pics HERE)
Mesa Verde National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The park, located in Montezuma County, Colorado, occupies 81.4 square miles (211 square kilometers) and features numerous ruins of homes and villages built by the ancient Pueblo people. Most of these structures date between 500 A.D. and 1250 A.D. It is best known for several spectacular cliff dwellings — structures built within caves and under outcroppings in cliffs.
We stayed in Mancos, Colorado @ Flagstone Meadows Ranch – a wonderful Bed and Breakfast run by a gentleman steeped in local history and Native Indian culture. He’s also a gourmet chef who grinds his flour just before baking his amazing breads.
The Spanish term Mesa Verde translates as “green table“. The picture above is a view of the green table from where we stayed.
Six miles to Cortez, and a further twenty-odd miles inside the park took us to the top of the Mesa – close to 8,000 feet above sea level. The hills of Mesa Verde have almost flat tops but are separated by narrow, often sheer-walled canyons up to 1000 meters deep.
This was the land of the Pueblo people – referring to 19 native American tribes including the Hopi, Navajo and Zuni. (More about the Pueblo people HERE)
The Pueblos lived in villages near rivers in the Southwest. This area extends from present-day Utah south all the way south to Mexico. See the map of ancient Pueblo areas HERE. The land varies between steep-walled canyons, plateaus, and sandy deserts. To the south are mountains.
The ancient Pueblos, demarcated into groups called the Anasazi, Hohokam and Mogollon, spent hundreds of years as nomads in this area, tracking game, looking for wild fruit, nuts and berries. In their early history the Pueblos slept in natural caves and on cliffs. Mesa Verde was inhabited by the Anasazi people.
They began settling down and raising crops as farmers around the first century A.D., when maize, squash, and beans were widely adopted. They had just six weeks of rain in summer. Snowfall in winter supplied water for streams, springs, and water holes. The Pueblo Indians learned to irrigate their fields and to find moist spots for dry farming. Four rivers run through the area: the Rio Grande, Colorado, Gila, and Salt. The settlements in the Montezuma Valley harnessed them for irrigation.
What makes the Mesa Verde site unique is the fact that it was continuously inhabited for centuries without a major water source. Unlike those in the Montezuma valley, the settlements atop the Mesa did not have access to any major rivers. Their crops were watered by hand, with water from run-off streams and water holes. Therefore, hunting and gathering was an important source of food.
Think about this.They had to hand water their crops. They had not started making pottery yet. They used baskets as containers to store and carry water. They had to be very tightly woven for this purpose, mainly using yucca fiber.
See THIS Anasazi basket recovered from excavations at Mesa Verde. (from thefurtrapper.com)
The size of this squash shows how successful the basketmaker farmers were. This gourd shell is from that era and was probably used for storage and to transport water as well.
This dried ear of corn is atleast 1,500 years old.
Most of their implements were made of stone and wood - like this stone knife with a wooden handle.
The ancient food processor – mano and matete, used to grind corn.
Pottery manufacture began about A.D. 400 . Clothing was woven from cotton, grown in warmer areas, and yucca fiber.
Baskets and pots from that era. This is what the inside of a typical Anasazi home may have looked like.
During this era, the Anasazi lived in pit houses , partly underground. Hundreds of these have been found across the Southwest.
This is a reproduction of a pit house at Mesa Verde National Park. Picture: Wikimedia Commons.
The pit houses at Mesa Verde are dated around 600 A.D.
Over time, these homes were expanded by the addition of storage structures made of adobe and poles or adobe and stone, eventually evolving into independent homes grouped in L-shapes, semicircles or rectangles. These complexes became more elaborate over time, with thicker walls made of jacal worked stone.
The village was built around the kiva. The kiva was a round building with steps going up to the roof entrance. The men met in the kiva to discuss problems and to worship. While the kiva was essentially the male domain, the houses were owned by the women.
“Logs from long trees were used to support the roof. Each family lived in a room that was only 12 by 24 feet in size. The outer walls were built first. Poles were then placed on top of the outer walls. Next willow branches were piled on the beams that supported the roof. A layer of grass and weeds followed then a layer of earth. Houses shared walls and were often stacked on top of each other. One’s porch was often the roof of the house below. Ovens were built on roofs. Doors and windows were small to keep out the heat. The Pueblos entered their homes by ladders through the roof. The ladders could be moved if enemies attacked. Inside the pueblo, ledges on walls were used as shelves. The people sat on blankets. Beds were rugs or sheepskins. The Pueblo village had about 500 people or less living in it.” (Source)
The inside of a pueblo.
A ledge for water drainage
Some of these settlements in the Southwest, from nearly 1000 years ago, are occupied to this day.
The Hopi village of Old Oraibi and the Zuni village of Acoma have been continuously occupied since 1150 A.D. (Southwest Indian Council). Inhabitants at Old Oraibi claim their village was founded in 1051.
What makes Mesa Verde special is the number and size of these pueblos built as cliff dwellings. There are over 4,000 separate structures, many built under steep, overhanging cliffs in narrow canyons.
So one day someone was gazing across the rim of the canyon that cuts through the mesa, looking at all these empty alcoves while tending to her corn and thinking, ‘What a waste of good real estate!!’
The cliffs have alternating layers of shale and sandstone.
How these alcoves were formed:
Almost a thousand feet of Mancos Shale supports a several-hundred-foot layer of Mesa Verde Sandstone. The shale was deposited some 80 or 90 million years ago as marine sediments, with the overlying sandstone left behind as the beaches of the retreating sea. The water advanced again at one point, creating a shale- and coal-bearing layer of the Mesa Verde Sandstone called the Menefee Formation. Another retreat deposited more sand, forming the Cliffhouse Sandstone. In recent geological history, this weaker shale has eroded and collapsed more easily than the overlying Cliffhouse Sandstone. As it has done so, it has undermined the sandstone, which has peeled off in arching layers to create the alcoves that became the sheltering cliffs of the Anasazi communities.
(Source)
One can witness this close at hand at Balcony House, where water seeps through the stone, peeling off layers. On the other side of this wall of stone, is this:
Balcony House
Building a dwelling inside these ‘caves’ is sheer genius. It protects the dwellers from the raging desert winds, is much cooler than the blazing mesa top in summer, and protects against the snowstorms in winter. It was very difficult for animals and other predators to reach these dwellings.
Since these alcoves were formed by water seeping through layers of rock, a tiny stream always ran inside the cliff dwelling, and made its way outside through the rock walls.
Behind the last row of dwellings inside each settlement, was a dark, damp area were the water flowed. This was the water source for the cliff dwellers. The part that seeped outside through the rock walls was often the main water source for the animals. At dawn and dusk, the cliff dwellers would go around the cliff dwelling, to the rock face where the wild animals and turkeys would congregate to drink water, and hunt them down.
Building these cliff dwellings was a Herculean task. Everything that went into their construction had to be carted down two hundred feet or so of sheer rock. Getting back to the mesa top meant climbing that rock face.
Cliff Palace is the largest set of cliff dwellings in North America. To give you an idea of scale, this set of dwellings is believed to have existed all the way to the roof of the cave opening – several stories high. The Pueblo people’s ‘commute’ to their farmland at the mesa top involved going up and down that 200-foot thick rockface. Since they had no irrigation, they had to also transport water and everything else needed for farming to the top using gourds and clay containers. They also had to bring the grain and anything else they needed down into the dwellings.
It is believed that they used thick ropes made of yucca fibre and other natural materials to do this. A 250-foot long rope is one of the archeological finds at these Pueblo sites.
Spruce Tree House, once three stories high, rests beneath a rockface almost double the height of the structures.
The National Park Service has erected a set of tall ladders to help visitors navigate the various structures. Looking down a sheer drop of a thousand feet can be quite scary.
We used the ladders and hand and toe holds carved into the rockface by the Pueblo people nearly a thousand years ago. They, however, used just ropes. (LIKE THIS)
Square Tower House, built between 1200 and 1300 A.D.
The T-shaped doors are evident everywhere.
According to Hopi elders, the openings on these set of structures evoke the face of a Kachina figurine. (See Hopi Kachina figurines HERE and HERE)
In Hopi, the word Katsina or Qatsina means literally “life bringer“. It can be anything from an element, to a quality, to a natural phenomenon, to a concept.
A kiva in front of a two-story structure that survived the ravages of centuries.
Cactii in bloom
A Navajo illustration depicting the corn harvest.
Around the 13th century, the inhabitants of Mesa Verde left their settlements and migrated to the plains. While the reasons have not yet been established, climate change is believed to have been the primary cause.
After approximately 1150 A.D. North America experienced significant climatic change in the form of a 300 year drought, which also led to the collapse of the Tiwanaku civilization around Lake Titicaca. Confirming evidence is found in excavations of western regions in the Mississippi Valley between A.D. 1150 and 1350, which show long lasting patterns of warmer, wetter winters and cooler, drier summers. …
Evidence also suggests a profound change in the religion in this period. Chacoan and other structures constructed originally along astronomical alignments, and thought to have served important ceremonial purposes to the culture, were systematically dismantled. Doorways were sealed with rock and mortar. Kiva walls show marks from great fires set within them, which probably required removal of the massive roof – a task which would require signficiant effort. Habitations were abandoned, tribes split and divided and resettled far elsewhere. This evidence suggests that the religious structures were deliberately abandoned slowly over time.
(Source: Wiki)
The place was uninhabited and a secret to white settlers, until it was discovered by some cattle ranchers in the 1880s.
A visit to Mesa Verde is incomplete without a trip to the Anasazi Heritage Center at Dolores.
There one can see Anasazi relics, and their artisanry as weavers, basketmakers and potters.
Anazasi pottery is valued because of its unique motifs and style. The turquoise and other precious stones were acquired through trade with tribes in the valley.
Harris, our host, recommended a tour of nearby Pueblo sites, given by members of the Ute reservation, located near Mesa Verde National Park. The half-day tour needs to be reserved in advance. Harris recommends going along with them in their vehicle (at an extra charge), rather than following them in your own vehicle over a 40-mile stretch of unpaved road. We didn’t make reservations in advance and were unable to take this tour.
Anasazi History
Pueblo pottery of the southwest
Pueblopottery.net
Pueblo Textiles
Filed Under: Anasazi, colorado, lifestyle, Mesa-Verde-National-Park, national park, national-parks, Photo Essays, Pueblo, TRAVEL
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29 Comments
Your pictures are fabulous! Makes me want to go all the more. And scares the crap out of me as well. Goin gup the ladders will be just fine. It’s coming down again! A well-travelled friend told me that she was soon coming down the ladders face forward – which is how the Anasazi did it. Face forward?! Where you can see where you will fall?! Apparently it’s the most natural way to descend. Her pictures are here, if you’re interested.
face forward is apesh!t crazy. natural way to descend? what does that make most people who visit that place? freaks? – b.
They lived under the mesa?
Smart folks! Love that pic of cactii in bloom!
Great post, folks. Its really mesmerizing!! and lovely pictures too. Thanks for this virtual tour!
Amazing pictures Bee :yes: :bow: :secret: :horn: :tongue: I am bookmarking the page
:bow: :horn:
Great and beautiful pictures. Thanks for sharing…. :yes:
:love: :huh:
Wow ..fabulous photos.I envy you guys!
Thanks for sharing!
wow its so nice to see those wonderfull pictures. thanks for sharing
I think the next time I am going to tag along with you when you go on vacation (if you’ll have me tagging quietly behind!). This is my kind of place and I love the pictures!
wow amazing post with so much information… a virtual tour indeed … thank u heaps…. u make me want to travel to the US!!! :secret:
WHOA!!! Great pics and beautiful info.Love the native finds.With kids in ele.,middle and HS ,we go thru’ that history regularly and even built a Teepee for a school project!
Thank you for the longest post ever!! Now mine looks like a puny little thing and I can relax!!If anybody complains ,I can guide them to you!;D
thanks for sharing such wonderful pics. it sound like its worth a visit. but can’t go with kids right?
Why not?
Bee, some of those pics are just fabulous! :bow:
I love that ” ladder pic” :yes:
I am just inserting these smileys because I can! :horn:
BTW, who takes most of your pics? You or Jai? :hmm:
both of us do. j took most of these. – b.
Did you purchase carbon offsets to account for any increase in your carbon footprint? Any tips for carbon neutral travel?
i’m very wary of the carbon offset industry.
http://www.newint.org/features/2006/07/01/keynote/
http://www.spinwatch.org/content/view/4035/29/
if you do want to use carbon offset companies, we recommend you look at this consumer report by Clean Air/Cool Planet and pick the companies recommended by them.
http://www.cleanair-coolplanet.org/ConsumersGuidetoCarbonOffsets.pdf
the only solution, in my mind, is to reduce emissions. we had a rental car and not much control over the kind of vehicle we used. in fact, we got a vehicle that was different from the type we had specified. the best way would be to drive in a hybrid car and avoid flying. unfortunately, these places have almost no public transport. places like glacier national park have bus tours, and we would use them. some places are accessible by train – like the amtrak line from chicago to glacier national park. – b.
WHOA!!!!!!!!!! that must’ve been a sublime experience
all this with no major water source, i’m speechless. You are really gutsy to be climbing those
I need to chk if the MET has a section on this, ‘coz each n every time i go there i just can’t get myself out of the Egyptian section.
Awesome Post.
Wow, those pics are mind-blowing. Thanks for sharing, Pragyan
Bee and Jai, thanks for taking me on this amazing trip with you.
Wow this is amazing. You guys must have felt like explorers. Very interesting to know this piece of history.
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Thanks for the pictures. I’m helping my daughter with her homework right now. She is reading about the Anasazi. And I learned a new Scrabble word, too – Kiva!