Mesa Verde National Park

Mesa Verde National Park

Mesa Verde is a fantastic look into the Pueblo people who made it their home for over 700 years, from 550 to 1300.  The Park Service protects 5,000 known archaeological sites, including 600 cliff dwellings.  We did not see all of these items as we only had a couple of days stay here so we hit the hi-lights. 

The Mesa Top from Pit House to Pueblo

The homes and religious structures of the Ancestral Puebloans, who were found to live in this area from around 550 to 600, were simple modest dwellings consisting of shallow pits dug into the ground, covered with pole and mud roofs and walls with entrances through the roofs.  The original walls and roofs have long since returned to nature.

 

 

Each home was set up similarly with a large space, used as a general living space, with a fire pit used for cooking and heating the home.  There was a large flat stone slab placed in front of the fire pit to keep air circulating, both deflecting cool drafts and drawing smoke up and out of the home.  Each had a smaller room to store food and fire wood.  Imagine living in this dim pit house with extended family, parents’ children, grandparents, all sleeping on the floor on twill mats, trying to keep warm on winter nights ….. hhhmmm  … I think I’d miss my comfy bed!!!

 

 Between 700 and 950 there were significant architectural developments.  The Pitt Houses were dug deeper into the ground … about four feet down, and they often built over an original pit house making improvements.  For example instead of venting the fire pit up through the roof of the house they now built a vertical ventilator shaft in one side.  Gradually by 850 homes were being constructed above ground.  The foundations were shallow slab lined pits, they usually  had a series of rooms covered over with mud.   By 950 the homes consisted of the Pitt House with low rock walls, the Deep Pit House with four foot deep walls, one or two above ground rooms as well as a Kiva – a round four foot deep structure with slab covered walls which were used for seasonal ceremonies.

 

The Cliff Dwellings

Spruce Tree House, shown below, is the third largest and best preserved cliff dwelling in the park.  Built into a natural alcove between 1211 and 1278 it contains 130 rooms, eight kivas and may have housed  60 to 80 people. 

 

 Cliff Palace, shown below, is the largest cliff dwelling in North America. From the rim top overlooks the collection of rooms, plazas and towers fits perfectly in the sandstone overhang that has protected it since the thirteenth century.  While it is impossible to know why Ancestral Pueblo people decided to move into the cliff side alcoves building elaborate and expensive (for that age) structures (like Cliff Palace) a series of sciences including archeology, ethnography and dendrochronology along with a host of other disciplines have offered us insights into this era in this regions history. Many have worked on excavating and repairing the crumbling walls since the discovery of the Palace, especially Jesse Walter Fewkes of the Smithsonian Institution in 1909.  The scientist can only speculate as to why the people decided to live in cliff dwellings.  Perhaps the dwellings were similar to our capital cities, a place for administrative  or community centers with the 100 to 120 residents acting as ‘caretakers’ of stored crops, who performed maintenance to help distribute the stored crops and coordinate special events for the hundreds of people from outlying communities.  We can also only speculate why these Ancestral Puebloan peoples had moved on by the 1300’s.  Perhaps due to a long drought at the end of the 1200’s causing crops to fade and the larger animals needed to feed the people to move on as well.

The history and knowledge learned is the same for all of the cliff dwellings in the park.  Enjoy the photos below while you imagine yourself living during this time period, in a cliff dwelling.  

 
Sun Temple
There is a structure discovered in 1915 the scientist believe was constructed as a place for worship.  It is a “D” shaped structure and is much larger than anything else found from this time period in this area. It was carefully constructed with four foot thick double walls that were all filled with a rubble core.  Every stone was carefully chipped so that the surface created finely masoned walls.  There were no household goods or roof beams found indicating that the structure of nearly 30 rooms was probably never completed.  We could not go inside of the Sun Temple but I managed to get a few shots of it from across the canyon and of the halls at the entrance. 

 

There were many additional ruins that we were able to view including the Square Tower House, the New Fire House and Fire Temple, views of the valley, and of course there are always flowers and other interesting things to photograph.  Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The view as we drove into the park!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More to come soon  😊 🐕

Jan  🌷🌷🐾🐾