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Mesa Verde National Park
In southwestern Colorado, 9 miles east of Cortez, Mesa Verde National Park is one of the nation's major archeological preserves. The park consists of nearly 5,000 archeological sites, which include 600 cliff dwellings. Mesa Verde, Spanish for "green table," is so called because of its comparatively level top, forested with juniper and pinyon trees. It encompasses 80 square miles, rises 1,800 to 2,000 feet above the valley along the north side and slopes gradually down to the cliffs bordering the Mancos River Canyon on the south.
A score of large canyons seam the mesa, and in the shelter of the hundreds of alcoves eroded in the cliffs are some of the world's largest and best preserved cliff dwellings. Archeologists have stabilized only a few of the sites; asphalt roads lead to overlooks above the main ones.
The earliest known inhabitants of Mesa Verde were the Modified Basket Makers, descendants of a people who lived in the Four Corners region. They built subterranean pit houses about A.D. 500-750. From A.D. 750 to 1100, these cliff dwellers perfected their living quarters, building kivas (ceremonial rooms) and masonry houses around open courts (pueblos).
From A.D. 1100 to 1300, arts and crafts reached their peak; pottery and cloth were often elaborately decorated. Around 1200 they moved into the alcoves for reasons that remain unknown and built cliff dwellings. Sometime about 1276 a drought struck and lasted 24 years. The resulting crop failures, depletion of resources, other environmental problems and possible conflict may have driven the people from Mesa Verde in search of a more reliable water supply and improved living conditions.
Some of the Pueblo people living in the Rio Grande pueblos in northwestern New Mexico and on the Hopi mesas in northern Arizona are descendants of the former occupants of Mesa Verde.
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