For those who fight for it, life has a flavor the sheltered will never know.
During my road trip to Colorado, I got the opportunity to stop at Mesa Verde National Park. This one is quite different, because it’s more about the people who lived there rather than the dazzling rock formations or giant cliffsides. The park protects some of the best preserved Puebloan archaeological sites, and at it really is something to marvel at. The park includes 600 cliff dwellings, which are the towns that the people built inside the cliffs. Looking at them from far away, they begin to look like miniatures, and it’s such a wild experience. The park does guided tours where you can go into the village, and check out the houses and climb through all the crawl spaces. Unfortunately since I arrived during the winter, the trails to see them up close were all closed for ice and snow, so it was a quick visit.
Mesa Verde is Spanish for Green Table because when looking at it, the tops of the cliffs are covered in forest and are a great spot for farming. The inhabited group of people were a nomadic Paleo-Indian people that developed from the Basketmaker culture. The park is set up where you start with the earlier people and where they lived, and as you travel through, the cliff dwellings become more and more technologically advanced as time goes on and the people start to develop more and more. The majority of these houses were made out of only 3 materials, sandstone, mortar, and wooden beams. The most insane part of it all is that they would dig little holes into the cliffside, and would use those to climb up and down from the farming area on the top, balancing baskets on their heads full of crops and water. But as we all know, nothing worth having comes easy. The park is quite beautiful when you enter, and the dwellings are separated by a giant valley.
Cliff Palace
Cliff Palace is thought to be the largest cliff dwelling in North America. This is one of the guided tours you can take to walk around inside the houses. The dwellings here had multiple rooms, and it was considered a social administrative site.
Spruce Tree House
Spruce Tree House was the next dwelling that we stopped at. It’s the third largest cliff dwelling and was home to about 60-80 people. This guy was originally found when two ranchers stumbled upon it searching for their cattle. There used to be a large spruce tree that was growing from the dwelling to the mesa top, and people first inhabited the cave by climbing down the tree.
Square Tower House
I have no information on Square Tower House to administer, other than it’s a pretty cool square tower house. =]
Long House
Long house is reached by the Long house Loop Trail and has ranger guided tours, but that was another one that was closed for us and only open to cross country skiers. So photos from afar are all I can provide!
All in all, Mesa Verde is a beautiful park, and I’m glad I got to hit it. Seeing the old ruins, and knowing how early people would free climb up and down the sides of those cliffs balancing supplies on their heads, using nothing but little handmade divots is such an insane concept to me. You’re protected from any and all threats living in those locations, but the everyday survival of not falling off that cliff is enough threat for me to nix that idea real quick. I give them all my props.
