In the Footsteps of the Ancient: Mesa Verde National Park

Mesa Verde National Park. Janna Graber

The sun shines bright at 8 a.m. when we meet our guide. The semi-arid desert here in southwestern Colorado can be brutal, and the sun’s rays beat down without mercy. It’s hard to imagine living here without modern comforts, but this region was once home to a thriving culture of Ancestral Puebloans.

From 550 A.D. to 1,300 A.D., the Ancestral Puebloans lived and worked in what is now Mesa Verde National Park. For the first six centuries, they lived primarily on the mesa top, farming and working the land. Later, they constructed intricate cliff dwellings tucked under the protected alcoves of the canyon walls, many of which can still be seen today.

Mesa Verde National Park

Mesa Verde is the only national park in the United States dedicated to preserving the works of men—and what incredible works they are. Their elaborate structures include more than 5,000 sites, including hundreds of stone homes, pit houses, pueblos, and farming structures. Many of the villages built into the canyon walls were reachable only by a heart-racing descent on toe and handholds carved into the rock. It seems that life was good here, for a while.