cliff palace at mesa verde
Mesa Verde National Park was established in 1906 to preserve sites built by "Pre-Columbian Indians" on mesa tops and in canyon alcoves. The park, containing 52,073 acres of Federal land, is a unit of the National Park System, and the NPS, a division of the Department of Interior, administers this site.
Mesa Verde, Spanish for "green table", rises high above the surrounding country. For 750 years, the Ancestral Puebloans occupied the area within the park. From the hundreds of dwellings that remain, archeologists have compiled one of the most significant chapters in the story of prehistoric America. If you are able to leave your modern self behind and think only in the past, you may be able to understand and enjoy a fascinating story of life in earlier times.
There are over 4,000 known archeological sites in Mesa Verde National Park, 600 of which 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.
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.
About 1,400 years ago, long before Europeans explored North America, a group of people living in the Four Corners region chose Mesa Verde for their home. For more than 700 years they and their descendants lived and flourished here, eventually building elaborate stone communities in the sheltered alcoves of the canyon walls. Then, in the late A.D. 1200s, in the span of a generation or two, they left their homes and moved away. Mesa Verde National Park preserves a spectacular reminder of this ancient culture.
Descendants of Mesa Verde Ancestral Puebloans include the Hopi in Arizona, and the 19 Rio Grande pueblos of New Mexico: Taos, Picuris, Sandia, Isleta, San Juan, Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, Nambe, Tesuque, Jemez, Cochiti, Pojoaque, Santo Domingo, San Felipe, Santa Ana, Zia, Laguna, Acoma, and Zuni.
a view from the
room eyei stayed
to write and draw ...
the autumn air
at 7500 feet
was clear and crisp
with a tinge of winter already in the
air
indeed
the land is green
which would make quite an impression
if you just arrived from
chaco canyon
in new mexico
where there is very very
little
green to be seen
sunset at mesa verde
the silence
of the land
at sunset
is awe inspiring
simply compelling the
listener
to
"hear"
there was
a terrible fire at mesa verde
a few years ago
and much of the
land was
burned
ultimately
making way for new life