I visited Mesa Verde back in 2010, but on that trip most of the cliff dwellings were closed so the park could do some maintenance. So on this visit, I made sure to book tours to Cliff Palace, which is the largest and most prominent cliff dwelling in the park.
The Ancestral Puebloans began building Cliff Palace around the year 1190.
The tour starts out at an overlook, which provides a great view of Cliff Palace and of the valley.
Here you can see a group of people standing around one of the kivas during a tour, which provides a bit of scale:
We met the ranger who would be giving our tour, who escorted us through a gate and then down some steep stairs and a ladder. We then followed a trail that ran under the bluff towards a flat area with enough room for our tour group to sit. The ranger talked about the history of the site for a few minutes, and took a few questions from the group (including one about kivas from Jonah). I took a few pictures...
Cliff Palace is the largest cliff dwelling in North America, and contains over 150 rooms and 23 kivas. At its peak, about 100 people lived here.
It's thought that Cliff Palace was an important social, administrative and ceremonial site for the Ancestral Puebloans.
The ranger moved our group along a paved path towards a large kiva. As we were gathering around, we heard someone scream "WOAH WOAH WOAH!!" The yelling was coming from the overlook, on the bluff above us. A small child had climbed over the guardrails and was standing precariously on the edge of the overhang. The person yelling managed to grab the kid before anything bad could happen. Our ranger paused in her talk, glanced over at the commotion, and then nonchalantly said "well he was almost on the news."
The Ancestral Puebloans lived here until the year 1300, when the site was mysteriously abandoned. No one really knows why. But it's thought that several years of droughts disrupted crops and food production.
After the Ancestral Puebloans left, the cliff dwellings sat abandoned for centuries. In that time, Cliff Palace "slowly deteriorated from the effects of water, wind, freeze/thaw cycles, differential fill levels, a variety of animals, spalling of the alcove roof, and the inherent qualities of the prehistoric structures themselves" (according to the NPS).
In the 1880s, Mesa Verde was rediscovered. But that ended up accelerating the decline of the ruins as looters descended on Mesa Verde. They used pickaxes and dynamite to blast through the dwelling walls in order to find artifacts. They tore out century-old wooden beams to use as campfire. The dwellings were in rough shape. Here's a photo from 1891 that shows Cliff Palace before it was acquired by the National Park Service.
In 1906, Mesa Verde National Park was established as the first national park that preserved a man-made site of cultural significance. Starting in 1908, efforts were made to stabilize and restore the cliff dwellings. Significant work was done at Cliff Palace, which included restoring the four-story square tower. Slightly-different colored materials were used in the restoration, so that it would be evident which parts were reconstructed.
As the tour ended, and before our ranger could usher us back to the top, one of the members of our group stopped and then fell to the ground. It wasn't really that hot out there (in the 80s), but she must have been standing in the direct sunlight during the tour and suffered heat exhaustion. But after a few minutes, she got up and we all headed back up to the trailhead. We asked our ranger if everything was ok, and she assured us that everything was fine. Then she said that was good, since it would be less paperwork for her.
We got back in the car and then drove over to the overlook for the Square Tower House. This cliff dwelling contains the tallest structure built in the park, which stands at 27 feet.
This dwelling is thought to have been occupied between the years 1200 and 1300.
Although the site has been stabilized by preservationists, the vast majority of it is original. The wooden beams that you can see are all original, meaning that they were installed centuries ago.
We went to another overlook, this one presenting a different view of Cliff Palace. It looked so tiny from here, like a little model you'd see in the visitor center.
Most of the dwellings at Mesa Verde are small, and are tucked under hard-to-reach cliffs. It's hard to imagine how difficult it was to build these structures so long ago.
Not all of the dwellings here are in the cliffs. There are many archaeological sites on the mesa top, which were built long before the cliff dwellings. We stopped at the Far View Community, which "was once an extensive farming community and one of the most densely populated regions of the Mesa Verde....In ancient times, it was a place of modest homes interspersed with small farm fields. It was a place filled with people, vibrant life, and constant change."
Construction at Far View began around the year 800, and people lived here for centuries.
At this point we had already well exceeded the amount of time that you could reasonably expect an eight year old to be excited about seeing old buildings. So it was time to head back to our place in Durango. Along the way we made a few stops at some of the overlook on the curvy road that heads out of the park...
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