- Mesa Verde
National Park
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- June 30th & July 1st, 1999
- After packing our lunches, we loaded into the 'toad'
and traveled highway 160 through Mancos, Colorado to
Mesa Verde National
Park. There is one entrance to the park, at its
northeasterly border between Mancos Valley to the east
and Montezuma Valley to the west. We checked through the
entrance station, then made a steep climb to the mesa top
and proceeded onward by the winding roadway along the
North Rim to the Far View Visitor Center, our first stop.
This fifteen mile trip takes more than thirty minutes
from the Park entrance.
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- Even though it was early morning, we joined the end
of a line for tickets to the restricted park area tours.
Long House, Cliff
Palace, and Balcony House are open only to
ranger-guided tours. The high demand for access to these
areas has also led to restricting visitors to seeing only
one of either Cliff Palace and Balcony House on any given
day. We chose to tour all three, getting tickets for Long
House and Cliff Palace today, and returning to Balcony
House the next morning.
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- After securing tickets, we drove twelve miles
(another 45 minutes) through juniper and pinyon
pine-covered tablelands to Wetherill Mesa and joined what
is touted as the Park's most strenuous guided tour - -
Long House (Photos above). Its was an easy hike down the
trail to this ancient ruin; but remember, we had to climb
back up and out. That was the strenuous part! These
multilevel ruins with hundreds of rooms were constructed
about 800 years ago by people often called 'Anasazi', but
today more correctly referred to as ancient Puebloan
ancestors. Looking closely, we could still locate
evidence of check dams and terrace farming along the mesa
drainage areas. Here the people grew corn, squash, and
beans. The ancient dwellers supplemented these foods with
wild game like deer and rabbits and gathered nuts,
berries, and plants. Then for reasons left for
speculation (severe drought, over-intensive farming,
nomadic raiding invaders), the people left, traveling
south into New Mexico and Arizona. Next Ute Indians
migrated into the area; however, they viewed the ancient
ruins as haunted and left them undisturbed.
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- Abandoned for about 600 years, the interconnected
ruins of Mesa Verde (Spanish for green table) were
rediscovered by ranchers, Richard Weatherill and his
brother-in-law Charlie Mason, who were out looking for
stray cattle during a December snowstorm in 1888. They
stumbled onto the Cliff Palace complex of over 200
individual homes, 23 underground kivas, and towers rising
four stories high. They returned, guided others, gathered
and sold artifacts. In the next few years, people swarmed
over the area gathering up every loose pot or stone tool
they could carry. Some Colorado residents recognized the
value of the sites and their persistent urgings led to
the 1906 creation of Mesa Verde National Park (Today the
park is also a United Nations World Heritage Site).
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- It was here that we first recognized the
destructiveness of tourists visiting these preserved
treasures. We felt privileged to be able to descend and
walk through these cliff-clinging ruins. Each of our
three tour groups were carefully instructed not to touch
the masonry because natural oils from our hands and skin
harm the structures and attract animals. After being
shown examples of this type of needless wear and tear, a
warning was given that some of these sites would probably
have to be closed to these up-close visits. Yet time
after time, we saw children allowed to scramble off the
pathways and adults ignore the instructions. It was an
eye-opening experience for Benjamin and us. Since then we
have talked about the problem with Park Rangers and it
seems universal. We fear that in a short time, many of
our historical and natural areas will be restricted just
to protect them from the massive numbers and
indiscriminate use of fellow tourists. It is already
happening in some areas. Things don't look the same
behind glass or through fencing. We imagined being able
only view these impressive ruins by binoculars from a
distant mesa rim overlook. What a shame. How can we
change these behaviors? "Step back, these irreplaceable
ruins are protected by Viper!"
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- Near Long House are two other sites that you can
visit on your own. Badger House Community has a trail
that takes you to four excavated surface ruin sites. It
contains the locations of ancient pit houses, storage
rooms, room-blocks, kivas, tunnels, and towers. Also on
the Weatherill Mesa, you can hike to a viewpoint for
Nordenskiold Ruin No. 16, named after a Swedish scholar
who undertook the first scientific archeological study of
the area in 1891. Gustaf Nordenskiold, schooled in
paleontology and geology, was guided by the Wetherill
brothers, Richard and John. The Weatherill's were
ranchers from the Mancos Valley east of today's
parklands. The nine crates of artifacts that Nordenskiold
collected are housed today in the National Museum of
Finland, Helsinki - - the largest group of ancient
Puebloan artifacts outside the United States. We did not
take the time to see it all, and 'had to save some for
the next time that we visit.'
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-
Our final tour for this day was Cliff Palace
(Photographs above) located on Chapin Mesa. As the crow
flies this was only two to three miles to the east of
Long House; however, mesas and canyon separate the sites.
Therefore we drove back around the U-shaped roadway,
about a twenty-mile loop that took us about an hour by
Toad. Cliff Palace is just one of nearly 600 cliff
dwellings concentrated in the park; however, it is the
largest in North America. The tour reaches Cliff Palace
by a stone stairway and then four 10-feet ladders. You
have to be able to climb both up and down ladders and not
be too afraid of heights.
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- An upper ledge at the ruins contains the remnants of
14 storage rooms. Here you can see a good example of a
dry wall, where rocks were carefully stacked without
mortar. Today the ruins show sections of wall and mortar,
T-shaped doorways, and in places you can see original
timber beams. Here the use of small 'chinking' stones
between larger blocks is strikingly similar to the
construction found at distant Chaco Canyon - - to the
south in New Mexico. Few places have their original
plaster covering and wall decorations. What we see today
is bare walls. Researchers have found a few un-eroded
sections that show that earth tones with off-white and
reddish-brown colors were favored. Wall paintings and
designs were commonly used.
-
-
- We returned the following day to complete the third
tour, Balcony House (Photos above). This smaller ruin of
35 to 40 rooms overlooks Soda Canyon. This tour took us
in via a 32-foot ladder (Right photo) and through a
narrow entrance tunnel to view the site's unique
cantilevered balcony. Here you get to climb and scramble
as you explore. So if someone asks us, "Which tour was
the best?", we would answer that they were all three
not-to-be missed. Each was distinctive. Long House is the
second largest and has its own spring water source. Cliff
Palace is impressively big and has the lots of ladders to
climb. And smaller Balcony House has its namesake
feature, the secure tunnel entrance, and the giant
ladder. We also made it to some of the Park's other
attractions such as the Petroglyph Trail, Spruce
House ruins (This Quicktime VR page takes a little
while to load), and the museum.
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- Its time to leave this great area . . . on to warmer
hikes. By the way, pack plenty of water, good advice for
anywhere in the southwest.
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- Created by Annette
Lamb and
Larry
Johnson,
1/99
- Updated, 6/00
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