Mesa Verde National Park
Address:
Mesa Verde National Park
PO Box 8
Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado 81330
Telephone:
(970) 529-4465 Mesa Verde National Park
Location:35 miles west of Durango on Colorado Highway 160. Drive time to the park entrance is approximately 40 minutes with another 30 minutes to the museum and ruins.
Fees: Park Entrance Fee for Private Vehicles - $10.00
Commercial Tour Fees for 1-6 Person Vehicle - $25.00 per person
Preparation: Elevations rise to over 7,000 feet and temperatures can be seasonally cool in the spring, winter or fall. Summer is generally hot so be prepared with plenty of water, a hat and comfortable walking shoes. It is best to dress with several light layers of clothing.
Background Information: To fully enjoy Mesa Verde National Park, plan to spend a day or two exploring its world-class archeological sites as well as its beautiful landscape.
Mesa Verde, Spanish for "green table", offers an unparalleled opportunity to see and experience a unique cultural and physical landscape. The culture represented at Mesa Verde reflects more than 700 years of history from approximately A.D. 600 through A.D. 1300 people lived and flourished in communities throughout the area, eventually building elaborate stone villages in the sheltered alcoves of the canyon walls. Today most people call these sheltered villages "cliff dwellings". The cliff dwellings represent the last 75 to 100 years of occupation at Mesa Verde. In the late 1200s within the span of one or two generations, they left their homes and moved away.
The archeological sites found in Mesa Verde are some of the most notable and best preserved in the United States. Mesa Verde National Park offers visitors a spectacular look into the lives of the Ancestral Pueblo people. Scientists study the ancient dwellings of Mesa Verde, in part, by making comparisons between the Ancestral Pueblo people and their contemporary indigenous descendants who still live in the Southwest today. Twenty-four Native American tribes in the southwest have an ancestral affiliation with the sites at Mesa Verde.
Mesa Verde National Park was established in 1906 to preserve the archeological sites, which "Pre-Columbian Indians" built on the mesa tops, and in the alcoves of a score of rugged canyons. The park, containing 52,073 acres of Federal land, is a unit of the National Park System and is administered by the National Park Service of the Department of the Interior.
There are over four thousand known archeological sites in MesaVerde National Park. Approximately 600 of these are cliff dwellings. Only a few of these sites have been excavated. Unoccupied for many centuries, they have been weakened by natural forces. Some were badly damaged by looters before the area was made a national park. Maximum protection must be given to the dwellings in order to preserve them. One regulation is strictly enforced: Visitors may enter cliff dwellings ONLY when accompanied by a Park Ranger. However, there are over 20 mesa top sites and viewpoints that may be visited on your own. Some sites are closed during winter.
Archeological sites of many different types are accessible to visitors. They range from pithouses built during the 500s to the cliff dwellings of the 1200s. The cliff dwellings are the most spectacular, but the mesa top pithouses and pueblos are equally important. Seen in their chronological order, these sites show the architectural development of Mesa Verde.
The Mesa Verde area was inhabited for about 800 years by agricultural people who began to drift into the area shortly after the beginning of the Christian era. We call the first farming people in the Mesa Verde area the Basketmakers (A.D.1-400), because weaving excellent baskets was their outstanding craft. At this early date, the people did not make pottery, build houses, or use the bow and arrow. No sites dating from the early Basketmakers have been found within the boundaries of Mesa Verde National Park.
Around the year A.D. 400, the people began to make pottery and build roofed dwellings. Around the year A.D. 750, they began to use the bow and arrow. Although the people were still the same, the culture was changing. Archeologists call these people the Modified Basket-makers (A.D. 400-750). The pithouses were built in alcoves and on the mesa tops. Scores of pithouse villages have been found on the mesas, and two pithouses have been reconstructed at Mesa Verde.
Starting about A.D. 750, the people grouped their houses together to form compact villages. These have been given the name of "pueblo", a Spanish term meaning village. The name, Developmental Pueblo (A.D. 750-1000), simply indicated that during this period there was a great deal of experimentation and development. Many types of house walls were used; adobe and poles, stone slabs topped with adobe, adobe and stones, and finally layered masonry. The houses were joined together to form compact clusters around open courts. In these courts were pithouses, which grew deeper and finally developed into ceremonial rooms we now refer to as kivas.
During their last century, some Pueblo Indians of Mesa Verde left the mesa tops and built their homes in the alcoves that abound in the many canyon walls. This last period marks the climax of the Pueblo culture in Mesa Verde and is known as the Classic Pueblo Period (A.D. 1100-1300). The exact number of dwellings in Mesa Verde National Park is unknown, but over 600 cliff dwellings have been documented.
Beginning in A.D. 1276, drought struck the region. For 23 years precipitation was scarce. One by one the springs dried up and the people were in serious trouble. Their only escape was to seek regions, which had a more dependable water supply. People left village after village. Before the drought ended, these people had left Mesa Verde area.
Links:
Mesa Verde Overview
Mesa Verde Facilities