Mesa Verde…

I am sure many of you are planning a vacation for the upcoming months and I would like to share a beautiful place with you called Mesa Verde.

Mesa means table and Verde is green.  So Green Table would be the translation.

Mesa Verde National Park is a U.S. National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado.

It is the largest archaeological preserve in the United States and the Captain and I have had the opportunity to visit this site several times and I always find it amazing and beautiful.

One year while living in New Mexico, I took Only Daughter and the Beautiful Grand-daughters One and Two to visit this National Park.

The Mesa Verde cliff dwellings are some of the most popular and most preserved ruins in North America.  .  Each of these structures ranged in size from one-room units to villages of more than 150 rooms. 

The dwellings were built by the Ancestral Puebloans sometime during the late 1190s who began living in the pueblos they built under the overhanging cliffs below the mesa top.

When looking at these dwellings, one can not help but be in awe of how these dwellings were built.

Each of these structures ranged in size from one-room units to villages of more than 150 rooms. 

There are steep canyons and rugged valleys. The Ancestral Puebloans moved onto the mesa around A.D. 500, but the cliff dwellings we see today were actually built around A.D. 1200.

Though the Ancestral Puebloans lived along the cliffs for that 700 year period, the cliff dwellings were constructed at the end of this time frame and then only lived in for about 75-100 years. No exact reason is known for the Ancestral Puebloans move away from these massive structures.

This is looking across the canyon and down. 

Love the explanations and drawings.

Three primary construction materials make up the cliff dwellings: sandstone, mortar, wooden beams.

A map to show you the location of Mesa Verde in Colorado…It is not too far from the famous four corners area which is the quadripoint in the Southwestern United States…the only place in the United States where four states connect. 

Can you name the four states?

Don’t worry, this is not a test!  🙂 The answer is at the end of this post.

 

The PitHouse.

The sun setting on the Palace dwellings. Awesome!

The Balcony House is one of the park’s most adventurous cliff dwelling tours in the park.  To enter, you must climb a 32-foot entrance   ladder and crawl through a short tunnel to enter the “medium size” cliff dwelling.  The Balcony House is made up of 40 rooms.  

 

Descendants of the Ancestral Puebloans include the Hopi, located in Arizona, and 19 Rio Grande pueblos of New Mexico.

Luminarias at dusk…..

The Sun Temple.

As much as I love living in Paradise (Florida) I am so fortunate to have lived in New Mexico. 

Oh, the names of the Four Corners States? New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Arizona.

There is so much of America to see…so many beautiful places, one does not need to leave the country to see extraordinary vistas from Sea to Shining Sea!

Me