Mesa Verde - Cliff Dwellings

Mesa Verde National Park is an official World Heritage Site. That means this site isn't just someone else's history. This is our shared human history and my opportunity to see it up close.

Technically, of course, the Ancestral Puebloans who inhabited this harsh landscape are not really my ancestors. About 1,400 years ago a group of people moved into this area and made it their home for the next 700 years. Then, suddenly, they all moved away for reasons that we may never understand. At first they lived in rough shelters, then pit homes, then stone dwellings on top of the mesa where they grew simple crops.

In the last part of their time in the Mesa Verde, the Ancestral Puebloans built the extraordinary cliff dwellings for which they are most famous. These dramatic and complex stone buildings are built into alcoves in the faces of high sandstone cliffs. In the days before elevators and abseiling equipment, the Ancestral Puebloans climbed to and from their homes on what we now call "hand and toe hold" paths.

These are tiny holes that they chipped into the rock face and used to grip when they spidered their way up the cliffs. They had to go up and down regularly to tend and harvest their crops on the mesa, to hunt for additional food, and to visit with other cliff dwelling villages. Ancestral Puebloans could not only routinely survive their vertical commute, they could do it with big bags of corn dangling from their foreheads.

Archaeologists believe that the Ancestral Puebloans chose to build their homes in these awkward and inconvenient alcoves because of seep springs like this one. There are no rivers in this area, and the seep springs that trickle from the back of these alcoves are the only year round water source available. This puddle is probably about the same size as it was when this cliff dwelling was inhabited. The major difference is that the puddle would have supported a population of 60 - 100 people. I suspect that despite their awesome construction skills, the Ancestral Puebloans didn't smell very good.