Mesa Verde National Park
National Park, Established 1906 The First National Park Set Aside To Protect The Works Of People Rather Than A Landscape. A UNESCO World Heritage Site Since 1978. Nearly 5,000 Known Archaeological Sites Including Some 600 Cliff Dwellings. · Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado
Mesa Verde was the first national park created to protect the works of people rather than a landscape, and it holds nearly five thousand known archaeological sites, including about six hundred cliff dwellings built into alcoves in the canyon walls. Ancestral Puebloan people farmed the mesa tops for seven centuries and spent the last seventy-five to a hundred years of that building and living in the alcoves below, then left in the late twelve hundreds - and their descendants, twenty-six affiliated tribes, are emphatic that they did not vanish but moved. Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling in North America, has about a hundred and fifty rooms. Seeing inside any of the major dwellings means a ranger-guided ticketed tour, and those sell out, which is the single thing most visitors get wrong. They are also emphatically not ruins of a vanished people: twenty-six tribes are affiliated with Mesa Verde and the interpretation here is built with them.
Mesa Verde National Park, US Highway 160, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, 81330, United States
The park is open year-round but the schedule is everything here. RANGER-GUIDED TOURS of Cliff Palace, Balcony House and Long House are ticketed, released in advance through the federal recreation system and routinely sell out - you cannot enter those dwellings any other way. Tour season runs roughly spring to autumn. Wetherill Mesa is seasonal and closes in winter. Mesa Top Loop Road and the overlooks stay open year-round. Spruce Tree House has been closed to entry for years for stabilisation. Confirm tours before travelling.
Mesa Verde National Park on Spottos · Explore more places on Spottos