Exploring The Mesa

[Click on any photo to enlarge.]

*Critters we’ve seen on our 2015 trip so far: elk, mule, mule deer, llama, prairie dog, donkey

*Birds we’ve seen on our 2015 trip so far: California condor, Brewer’s blackbird, American kestrel, spotted towhee

*National Parks/Monuments visited on 2015 trip so far: 3
 

Several times over the past few years when putting together our plans for heading out west, Mesa Verde National Park (www.nps.gov/meve) was always on the list, but it also always ended up being cut because it was a couple hundred miles out of the way.  This year we finally made it, and this place was amazing!  Having wanted to be an archaeologist at one point in my life, its history and preservation were exciting to see (though I wonder if I might have eventually gravitated to anthropology or geology since I have come to find them fascinating too!)

 

Located in Colorado covering 81.4 sq. mi. and established in 1906, the park protects over 4,500 known archaeological sites including 600 cliff dwellings.  It provides a look into the lives of the Ancestral Pueblo people (also known as the Anasazi) that lived there for over 700 years from AD 600 to 1300.  The sites are some of the best preserved in the U.S. like Sunset House pictured here which was built on two levels consisting of 33 rooms.

 

We stayed at the Morefield Camp-ground within the park which from mid to late April has only one loop open, is first come first serve, and has no hookups or water.  As we went around the campground loop, we noticed that there was basically only one site that was going to be big enough to fit us and that was
   just barely!  (Website said that there were sites big enough, but they must have been in the closed loops.)  However we did have some very entertaining mule deer in the campground at some point nearly everyday, grazing, running, playing.  Though the campground
   is only 4 miles from the park entrance, you make your way up the mountain along narrow, winding switchbacks.  (This view at left is actually looking back down the mountain and that’s the visitor center about midway down all the way to the right!)

 

Elevations in the park range from 6,900 ft. to 8,572 ft. with the visitor center being at the base near the park entrance.  This relatively new and modern energy efficient building is also a research facility.  Out front is a cast bronze sculpture by Edward Fraughton titled "Ancient Ones" standing 20' 2" tall.  It depicts an Ancestral  
Puebloan carrying a basket of corn climbing a Cliffside as he would have back in his day. The place doesn’t have many exhibits, and we kept looking for where the orientation film would be shown.  Finally asked and discovered that it’s actually at the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum, 22 miles from the visitor center in the park, so that was our destination one day.

 

During the summer there are two mesas (Chapin and Wetherill) with archaeological sites, but the rest of the year only Chapin Mesa is open.  From the outside the museum seems like a small log cabin, but it actually has several rooms filled with dioramas, artifacts, and exhibits.  We watched the 25 min. film that gave an overview of Mesa
Verde’s history and then wandered through looking at many of the exhibits.  One of the most fascinating to me was this pottery that was discovered in the floor of a small cave in 1955 filled with corn dating back to the 1200s.  The corn kernels are those actually found in that jar which had been buried up to its neck with the small bowl turned upside down as a lid keeping out insects and vermin.  The corn weighs 31 lbs. 4 oz. and measures about 22 quarts.

 

Out back is the Spruce Tree House, the park’s best preserved cliff dwelling.  These types of homes were built in shallow caves and under the canyon’s rock overhangs during the last 75 to 100 years of occupation in the region.  Spruce Tree, built sometime between AD 1211 and 1278, contains roughly
   130 rooms, and one can take a self-guided tour though some areas are off limits (two rangers are located at the site to answer questions).  To reach it involves walking down a paved winding path about a 100 ft. below the museum for a 1/2 mile round trip.  Russ decided to wait up top for me
while I made the descent down to the site (view from the House looking back up is at right).  The construction is quite remarkable especially when you consider when it was built (90% is original), though there is varying degrees of decay as would be expected.  The roof on one of the kivas has been
   restored by the park service, and there is a ladder that descends 6 feet down into the chamber.  I started to take a picture when I suddenly saw a hand on one of the rungs which surprised me as I had assumed you couldn’t go down there.  Well, of course, I had to go down and check it out.  These
round underground chambers were probably used for religious and/or social purposes with a roof made of log, mud, and stone (more on them later).  I was glad that I had made the walk down to Spruce Tree House to see this incredible archaeological site up close.

 

   Prior to cliff dwellings, the Ancestral Pueblo people lived mainly on top of the mesas in pit houses generally gathered together in small villages eventually building above ground pole and mud houses.  The population flourished as they farmed, hunted, and
   became proficient at making pottery and baskets.  There are many stops and loop roads along the Chapin Mesa road where you can view some of the remains of these surface sites dating back to AD 600, some with only the dug out ground and others partially still standing above ground.  Some of
these are found at the Far View Sites Complex where nearly 50 villages have been identified within a half square mile area.  It’s believed that people were living here about 200 years before they began building the cliff dwellings.  At left is just one of the houses of the few we saw.

 

Of course the big draw and fascination are the cliff dwellings, and there are plenty of them easily seen from the road or the overlooks, much more so than at Canyon de Chelly.  The largest and most famous of the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde is Cliff Palace consisting of 150 rooms and 23 kivas.  It is 1 of 3 dwellings that
can only be visited on a guided ranger tour, but this spring it was closed to tours because of some preservation work the park service was doing on it.  We did have a great view of it from across the canyon (that’s what I’m motioning to in the photo), then I zoomed in with the camera so you can have a better look.

 

Another of the tour dwellings is Long House, but it’s on the road that’s only open during the summer.  And last but not least is Balcony House, considered the most adventurous of the cliff dwelling tours…but more on that in the next post!