Mesa Verde is the only national park devoted entirely to the works of humans
Mesa
Verde is a largest archaeological area in the United States, with more than
4,000 sites dating from 600 to 1300 AD, including the most impressive
cliff dwellings in the south-west.
The inhabitants of the Four Corners region of Mesa Verde were the Anasazi
(Ancestral Puebloans), who in the thirteenth century built houses in the
shallow caves but abandoned them less than 100 years later.
The caves were discovered in 1888 by ranchers Charles Mason and his
brother-in-law Richard Wetherill, but many artifacts were looted before a
Denver newspaper aroused national interest in the site's protection and
it was declared a national park in 1906. The Chapin Mesa Archaeological
Museum provides information about the Anasazi civilization and displays
findings and artwork from the dwellings. Spruce Tree House, Balcony House
and Cliff Palace are open to the public and mesa-top ruins include the
Far View Complex, Cedar Tree Tower, and the Sun Temple. Badger House
Community is on Wetherill Mesa.
Ute Mountain Tribal Park, set aside by the Ute Mountain tribe to preserve
its heritage, adjoins Mesa Verde National Park and includes wall
paintings and petroglyphs as well as hundreds of surface sites and cliff
dwellings that are similar in size and complexity to those in Mesa Verde.
Among the country's newest national monuments, Canyons of the Ancients
created in June 2000, is a 660 sq-km (256 sq-miles) national monument in the
area that contains thousands of archaeological sites, in what some claim
may be the highest density of archaeological sites in the United States,
including the remains of villages, cliff dwellings, sweat lodges, and petroglyphs ranging in age from 700 to as much as 10,000 years old.
Canyons of the Ancients includes Lowry Pueblo, an excavated
twelfth-century village, which was probably abandoned by 1200 AD and is
believed to have housed up to 100 people. It has standing walls from 40
rooms plus 9 kivas (circular underground ceremonial chambers). A short,
self-guided interpretive trail leads past a kiva decorated with geometric
designs and continues to the remains of a great kiva, which, at 16.4 meters
(54 feet) in diameter, is among the largest ever found.
The park
entrance is located on US 160, 16 km (10 miles) east of Cortez in
Colorado.
