Mesa Verde National
Park - Colorado
 For thousands of years people
wandered across the Mesa Verde, living a nomadic life while
hunting wild game and gathering sustenance from the earth.
Fourteen centuries ago, a few chose to settle in Mesa Verde,
Colorado, staying near their planted crops. Over the next
seven centuries they built more permanent homes and villages,
and participated in extensive trade networks across the
Southwest. The people of Mesa Verde are known today
particularly for the grace of their architecture and the
beauty of their intricate black-on-white
pottery.
 Mesa
Verde National Park, a United Nations World Heritage Site, is
known internationally for the fabulous cliff dwellings. Though
long familiar to Mesa Verde's native inhabitants, the cliff
dwellings were brought to world attention after being noticed
by European-Americans in the late 1800's.
In an effort to
preserve these priceless cliff dwellings, the National Park
Service has excavated and stabilized both mesa top and cliff
dwelling sites, chronologically interpreting some 700 years of
Mesa Verde occupation so that people today can learn from the
past.
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. 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. The entrance to the park is 9
miles east of Cortez and 35 miles west of Durango in
Southwestern Colorado on US Highway 160.
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