Mesa Verde preserves the record of the ancestral Pueblo people who made this place their home for more than 750 years. The park includes over 4,500 archeological sites; only 600 are cliff dwellings. The Pueblo people grew crops and hunted game on the mesa tops. Hand-and-toe-hold trails connected the mesa-top fields to alcove villages and canyons below. The soil was fertile and, except in drought, about as well watered as today. The ancient people cut pinyon and juniper for building materials, firewood, and to clear fields.
About 550 AD, some of the people living in the Four Corners region decided to move onto the Mesa Verde. For over 700 years these people and their descendants lived and flourished here, eventually building elaborate stone communities in the sheltered alcoves of canyon walls. In the late 1200s in the span of a generation or two, they left their homes and moved away.
Mesa Verde National Park preserves as a reminder of this ancient culture. Archeologists have called these people Anasazi, from a Navajo word sometimes translated as "the ancient foreigners." We now call them Ancestral Pueblo people, reflecting their modern descendants.
Using nature to their advantage, about 1200 AD Ancestral Pueblo people began to build their villages beneath the overhanging cliffs. Their basic construction material was sandstone that they shaped into rectangular blocks about the size of a loaf of bread. The mortar between the blocks was a mix of dirt and water. Living rooms averaged about six feet by eight feet, space enough for two or three people. Isolated rooms in the rear and on the upper levels were generally used for storing crops.
Many daily activities took place in open court-yards in front of the rooms. Fires built in summer were mainly for cooking. In winter, when alcove rooms were damp and uncomfortable, fires probably burned throughout the village. Smoke-blackened walls and ceilings are reminders of the biting cold these people lived with for several months each year.
In the early 1900s, America's obsession with the automobile reached Mesa Verde National Park and quickly influenced the park's development. In 1914, a narrow dirt road was completed into the park. Two Studebakers, two Fords, one Reo, and one Hupmobile were the first automobiles to make the arduous journey from Mancos to what is now the Park Headquarters. The trip took three hours and visitors were charged $1.00 per car.
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| Old Roadface |
Improvements and yearly maintenance became a necessity on the narrow park road. Eventually, the Knife Edge Road was surfaced with asphalt. This section of the road was abandoned in 1957 when the Morefield-Prater tunnel was constructed.
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| Montezuma Valley |
Montezuma Valley (picture) and Mesa Verde (where I took the picture from) were once a part of the Ancestral Puebloan homeland. Between 600 AD and 1280 AD, hundreds of villages and farming communities thrived on the mesas, plateaus, and canyons that form this landscape. Archeologists estimate that as many as 35,000 Ancestral Puebloans lived in this region during the 1200s. At the start of the 21st Century, Montezuma Valley had a population of about 24,000 people. We hiked up to Park Point, the highest point in the park at an elevation of 8,572 feet. Montezuma Valley was what we saw.
Below are some early depictions of early villages in North America. The first is 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. They were hunters and gatherers. 19 fluted spear points were found among the bones of 30 bison at a site near Folsom, New Mexico. Hunters may have also used the atlatl, a spear or dart thrower, which gave great leverage by extending the length of the arm.
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| Early Habitation in North America |
The Basketmaker Period was about 1600 years ago. A group of hunting-gathering people settled in the Four Corners area from about AD 1 to 550. Although there is no evidence of these people at Mesa Verde, they used the alcoves in the surrounding area for sleeping and shelter. The introduction of agriculture allowed them to grow squash and corn in small fields. They also hunted deer and small mammals and gathered nuts, seeds and fruit. They were able to weave to make baskets, sandals, bags, aprons, belts. The baskets served many purposes.
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| Basketmaker Period |
The modified Basketmaker Period took place about 1300 years ago. Between AD 550 and 750, the Pueblo people began living in the area of Mesa Verde. They were descendants of the Basketmakers and more dependent on agriculture. They began building permanent semi-subterranean shelters, known as "pithouses." Groups of pithouses formed small villages. A typical pithouse consisted of a main living room with a bench surrounding the floor area and four timbers in the corners to support the roof. The hole in the roof served both for ventilation and as an entrance. A ventilator shaft dug under the wall or antechamber provided fresh air to the structure. These people learned to make pottery, fashioning water jars, bowls, pitchers, ladles, and cooking pots. The bow and arrow replaced the atlatl, making hunting easier. They also domesticated dogs and turkeys. The introduction of beans rounded out their staple crops of squash, corn and beans.
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| Modified Basketmakers |
The Great or Classic Pueblo Period took place about 800 years ago. AD 1100 to 1300 was the climax of Pueblo development in Mesa Verde. The people moved from small, compact villages on the mesa tops to alcoves where they built cliff dwellings, like Spruce Tree House, shown below on an autumn day in the late 1200s. Walls were built of shaped sandstone blocks laid in mud mortar and roofs were constructed of poles, bark and mud. Houses were grouped around courtyards where most of the daily activities took place.
They continued to farm on the mesa tops. Water was carried from a spring in the head of the canyon, about 100 yards north of the alcove. Clubs, snares and bows were used for hunting. Stone, wood and bone tools, including axes, knives, drills and hammerstones were vital to their survival.
Despite the advances made by the Pueblo people, changes in agriculture and living styles point to problems by the late 1200s. Although a severe 24-year drought began in AD 1276, the people had survived water shortages in the past. Depletion of the soil, timber resources, and game animals took a toll. The people left Mesa Verde by AD 1300, moving south and joining other Pueblo people in Arizona and New Mexico.
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| Classic Pueblo Period |
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| Puebloan Pottery |
The people lived on Mesa Verde for 700 years. The mesas, canyons, and expansive views were the backdrop to their everyday life. The deep canyons connected the communities. The people living on Mesa Verde were not isolated. They were part of of a large, active trading network that reached well outside the Mesa Verde region.
Spruce Tree House is the best preserved cliff dwelling.
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| Spruce Tree House |
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| Depiction of what Spruce House looked like |
Square Tower House had eight kivas and at least 60 rooms. To access Square Tower House, the residents carved hand-and-toe holds into the cliff face, and used ropes and ladders to scale the canyon walls.
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| Square Tower House |
In another area on Mesa Verde, Pithouses were discovered. The ones below were built sometime after 675 BC. It had a small antechamber. Charred posts, a baked clay floor and the presence of artifacts show it was destroyed by a fire, probably while still in use. Within a few years, a second, single room pithouse was built on top of the antechamber of the first. There is a tunnel-like ventilator that brought fresh air into the dwelling. This technology was still in use over 400 years later.
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| Depiction of the Pithouse |
Some of the other houses on the Chapin Mesa are Sunset House, Oak Tree House, and Cliff Palace.
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