Day 12, Mesa Verde National Park

A cool lazy morning’s start since we made Cortez yesterday and only Mesa Verde was on the list today.  It's a short nine miles from town to the park entrance.  The drive up onto the mesa is long and twisty, with fifteen mph turns in a number of places.  An excellent road, but you climb and climb and climb.  I would guess 2000 feet elevation gain.

A number of guided and self guided tours are available.  Self guided does not allow you to the structures, so a ranger tour is a must.  Three choices, Cliff Palace, Balcony House and Spruce Tree House.  For a whopping three dollars, you’re on a guided tour.  Best deal in town.  We chose Cliff Palace for two reasons, it’s the National Geographic classic image of Mesa Verde, and it’s morderately strenuous, but avoids the 35-foot ladder and crawling a long narrow passage.  The traveler with all day to spend would be well advised to take all the tours.  On the other hand, when you’ve seen one cliff dwelling, they do tend to look alike. You decide.


You learn a lot about the ancient peoples that live there.  You can learn a lot more from the internet than these mere words can communicate.  Many unanswered questions still remain.  Why did they leave?  When?  Where did they go?  Why did they not come back?

The nicest explanation I heard was from Ranger Kim.  The people believed they emerged from the third world beneath the Earth, to the fourth world, this one, seeking the ideal place to live.  Speculation is that through weather changes, about twenty years duration, the crops had been failing.  It was clear they had to move on, to find more fertile land.  That meant that they had not found the ideal gathering place yet, otherwise the crops would not have failed.  Descendents today say that search for the ideal place is still going on.  Sounds good to me.


For my woodworking friends reading along, the Kiva rooms had roofs made of timbers.  Interesting construction.  They have six masonry posts around the inside perimeter of these round rooms.  A beam is placed on each adjacent post, forming a hexagon against the walls.  Layer one.  Then a next layer of beams is stacked on the first layer, joints offset,and shifted slightly to the middle.  Ultimately a massive, conical timber roof is constructed.  I missed what keeps the rain from dribbling through.  Juniper poles form the ceilings of multi-level structures.  This wood is very rot and insect resistant and lasts for centuries.

The hour spent on this tour was so pleasant.  Listen to the guide, but imagine the voices and laughter and activity in this enormous place.  At it’s peak, the area is believed to have been home to around 40,000 people.

Tonight we’re in Durango.  Tomorrow, a train ride.