Visit this GOOGLE interactive national park link for maps, pictures, and satellite view of the park and surrounding area
Designated a World Heritage Site in 1978, Mesa Verde National Park located in Montezuma County, Colorado, protects some of the best preserved Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites in the United States.
Created by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, the park occupies 52,485 acres (21,240 ha) near the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. With more than 4,300 sites, including 600 cliff dwellings, it is the largest archaeological preserve in the U.S. Mesa Verde (Spanish for "green table") is best known for structures such as Cliff Palace, thought to be the largest cliff dwelling in North America.
Starting c. 7500 BCE, Mesa Verde was seasonally inhabited by a group of nomadic Paleo-Indians known as the Foothills Mountain Complex. The variety of projectile points found in the region indicates they were influenced by surrounding areas, including the Great Basin, the San Juan Basin, and the Rio Grande Valley. Later, Archaic people established semi-permanent rockshelters in and around the mesa. By 1000 BCE, the Basketmaker culture emerged from the local Archaic population, and by 750 CE the Ancestral Puebloans had developed from the Basketmaker culture.
The Mesa Verdeans survived using a combination of hunting, gathering, and subsistence farming of crops such as corn, beans, and squash. They built the mesa's first pueblos sometime after 650, and by the end of the 12th century, they began to construct the massive cliff dwellings for which the park is best known. By 1285, following a period of social and environmental instability driven by a series of severe and prolonged droughts, they abandoned the area and moved south to locations in Arizona and New Mexico, including Rio Chama, Pajarito Plateau, and Santa Fe.
Copyright 2016. Doug Heath. All rights reserved
To reach Mesa Verde and explore the site via a national parks service guided tour can be scheduled on a half day tour. However, the park is significantly larger than the standard tour and offers many opportunities to get out and explore nearby locations on a full or multi-day tour. Overnight camping at the national park facility include all the amenities from restaurants to showers. Overnight stays at the nearby national forest service facilities are primitive camping only. Portable toilets are available, however, only the food, drink and camp equipment brought to the site will be available. Motels are available in the nearby towns of Cortez and Durango, Colorado.
ADVENTURE TOURS
BEST
Mesa Verde, Spanish for green table, offers a spectacular look into the lives of the Ancestral Pueblo people who made it their home for over 700 years, from AD 600 to 1300. The exceptional archaeological sites of the Mesa Verde landscape provide testimony to the ancient cultural traditions of Native American tribes and are among the best preserved in the U.S. They represent a graphic link between the past and present ways of life of the Puebloan Peoples of the American Southwest. Today the park protects nearly 5,000 known archeological sites, including 600 cliff dwellings. These ancient indian ruins sites are some of the most notable and best preserved in the United States. Opportunities vary by season, and advance planning to this unique location is highly recommended.
WILD
WILD
Mesa verde NATIONAL PARK
Designated a World Heritage Site in 1978
Preserving the “Works of Man”
Where the pavement ends and the Best begins