Cortez, Colorado and the Cliff Dwellers of Mesa Verde National Park

From Moab, Utah we drove about 2 ½ hours to Cortez, Colorado in the Four Corners area.  Helen and I were very excited because we would visit Mesa Verde National Park, but we would also meet up with Paul and Dayna, longtime and dear friends from our Army days in Germany in the early 1970s who live in the area. Another couple, Rod and Sally, also from those days, was flying in to join us. We couldn’t get there fast enough.

Cortez, a city of about 8,000 residents sits at an elevation of 6,100 feet above sea level. As we drove in, clouds formed and rain, possibly show showers as well, were in the weather forecast. We managed to avoid all of that and pulled into Paul and Dayna’s driveway where Paul and Rod came out to greet us.  Paul, now a rancher, directed us to pull Lucy (trailer) over to one side of the driveway where, amazingly, he had full RV hookups, including 50 amp power and a sewer connection.  Perfect!

After getting Lucy situated, we joined Dayna and Sally in Paul and Dayna’s lovely home. Readers may remember that we introduced everyone to Rod and Sally several years ago, when we visited them at their summer home in Minnesota (link here), but we had not been with Paul and Dayna since the late 1970s. Although we managed to stay in touch over the years, the six of us had a lot of catching up to do over the next two days and our conversation lasted long into the evening.

The plan for the next day was for Helen and me to join Rod and Sally on a tour of Mesa Verde National Park. Snow fell as we drove to the Park Visitor Center to buy tour tickets and continued as we rode the bus along the face of Point Lookout to begin the tour. We passed a small herd of deer beside the road—the snow didn’t seem to bother them very much. Our tour began on a cliff overlooking the elaborate cliff dwellings on the opposite side of the canyon.

The Ancestral Pueblo people moved into this region around 600 AD and lived there for the next 700 years before scattering to New Mexico and other regions of the Four Corners around 1300 AD. The early inhabitants lived on the mesa tops in pit homes covered by a wood roof structure for around 200 years. Next, they began building above-ground homes composed of wooden poles covered in mud and plaster. By around 1150 AD, the Ancestral Puebloans began constructing elaborate stone homes in alcoves within the cliffs.  It is those homes that we came to see, and they are fascinating.

From our stops across the canyon, we had great views of several cliff dwellings that we would visit later. These structures resembled stone palaces and some extended three stories high. Some structures have one room only, and some have up to several hundred rooms and probably served as an early form of a community center. For perspective, our tour guide reminded us that the Ancestral Pueblo built the cliff dwellings around the same time as Europeans built the Cathedral at Notre Dame, and long before Europeans came to America.

The tour guide, a Park Ranger and a descendant of the Pueblo, led us down the cliff steps to the Cliff Palace, the largest and most elaborate of the Cliff Dwellings. Once there, he gave us an enlightening lecture about the life and work of the inhabitants.  Much is unknown about the people who lived there except that they farmed the mesa tops and were excellent basket weavers and potters. Most of the homes contained several families and some of the rooms were used to store grain and other food after drying.

By 1300 AD, the Ancestral Puebloans left Mesa Verde.  No one knows why, although most feel that a severe drought precipitated the move. Some believe that the Puebloans departed suddenly because of the tools, pottery, baskets, and other relics of the civilization left behind in the cliff dwellings.  Those relics and the dwellings remained largely untouched until the late 1800s when discovered by livestock farmers allowed to graze their herds on the Native American lands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eventually the area became the Mesa Verde National Park to preserve the Ancestral Puebloan history and culture. There are some 600 cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde and 4500 archeological sites. I recommend this visit to anyone looking to increase their knowledge of prehistoric America. Our tour lasted about three hours, but time flew by and before we knew it, the time came to climb back up the cliff and return to the bus.

The rest of our trip was spent enjoying the company of our friends and visiting the charming community of Cortez.  The sky cleared and we enjoyed the lush farms and the scenery below the San Juan mountains. Paul was kind enough to take us to the Antique Corral to do some browsing.  It is so hard for Helen and me to pass up an antique store or flea market.

That afternoon, Paul gave me a tour of his ranch that included a trip down to his fish pond to feed the trout that he raises there. His dog Piper ran ahead of us and had a ball watching the fish as they chase the food tossed into the pond. Numerous photo opportunities existed all around.  Some of them are shared here.

Reluctantly, the time came to Ease Along down the road. Rod and Sally left early. Helen and I lingered for a while, the morning was so beautiful and the snow-capped mountains had us entranced. By now, we have driven over 7,000 miles on our RV trip, and this visit is the highlight so far. We send our sincere thanks to Paul and Dayna for hosting us and the huge effort they made to make us feel welcome.  Thanks also to Rod and Sally for taking the time to join us and make the experience even better.

Retirement is the best gig going — time to be Easin’ Along.