60 Fun Facts About Mesa Verde National Park

Mesa Verde lies in which Colorado county, near the Four Corners?

It is the state's only UNESCO World Heritage Site, with its entrance on US 160.

What does Mesa Verde mean in Spanish?

Strictly it is not a mesa at all: it slopes south, and that tilt helped form the alcoves that shelter the dwellings.

By about what year had the Ancestral Puebloans developed from the Basketmaker culture at Mesa Verde?

They developed from the Basketmaker culture by about 750 CE and built the great cliff villages only in their final century on the mesa.

Roughly how many cliff dwellings does the park contain?

They are among more than 5,000 known sites, making Mesa Verde the largest archaeological preserve in the United States.

Which president signed the act creating Mesa Verde National Park in 1906?

The same year he approved the Antiquities Act; Mesa Verde was the first national park created to protect a place of cultural rather than natural significance.

Mesa Verde was the first national park created for what purpose?

The aim, in the words of the time, was to preserve the works of man.

Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling in North America, housed roughly how many people?

It has 150 rooms and 23 kivas and anchored a wider community of sixty pueblos and 600 or more residents.

How many kivas does the park's biggest cliff dwelling contain?

Alongside its 150 rooms, the number of ceremonial chambers points to its role as a centre for the surrounding pueblos.

Who rediscovered the park's greatest cliff dwelling on December 18, 1888, while looking for stray cattle?

The Wetherill ranching family had befriended the Utes, whose member Acowitz had told them of great houses deep in the canyon; Wetherill gave the ruin its name.

Which Swedish scientist brought scientific method to Mesa Verde in 1891 and shipped artefacts to Europe?

Angry locals had him arrested though no law forbade what he did; his collection ended up in a Nordic national museum.

Where did the artefacts Nordenskiöld sent to Sweden eventually end up?

A representative selection of Mesa Verde pottery is also in the British Museum, and much more sits in private collections worldwide.

Which journalist campaigned from 1887 to 1906 to protect Mesa Verde, enlisting 250,000 women's-club members?

Her party had rediscovered Balcony House in 1885; fellow activist Lucy Peabody lobbied Congress in Washington.

Which Hayden Survey photographer took the first pictures of a Mesa Verde cliff dwelling in 1874?

Prospector John Moss led him through Mancos Canyon; geologist William Holmes retraced the route the next year.

Which two Spanish friars named the Mesa Verde region in 1776 without ever seeing its cliff dwellings?

They were seeking a route from Santa Fe to California and named it for its high, tree-covered plateaus.

Around what year did the last inhabitants abandon Mesa Verde?

A severely dry spell from 1276 to 1299 ended seven hundred years of continuous occupation; the last construction timber was cut in 1281.

What do archaeologists call the dry period from 1276 to 1299 that ended occupation of the mesa?

The 13th century saw 69 years of below-average rain, and after 1270 it turned especially cold as well.

Tree-ring dating shows the last tree felled for construction on the mesa was cut in which year?

Ceramic imports collapsed at the same time, though local pottery production held steady to the end.

About how many people lived at Mesa Verde at the start of the 13th century?

Numbers rose sharply from 1225 to 1260, mostly on the plains west of the mesa at places like Yellow Jacket Pueblo near Cortez.

Which three crops, known as the Three Sisters, sustained the Pueblo farmers?

Corn reached the region about 1000 BCE and beans around 700 CE; piñon nuts, yucca and prickly pear fruit filled out the diet.

What is a sipapu, found in Mesa Verde kivas?

Kivas evolved from square protokivas into circular chambers 12 to 15 feet across by the 11th century.

The Basketmaker culture takes its name from what?

By about 500 CE the bow replaced the atlatl and pots replaced baskets, ushering in the Basketmaker III era.

What do the Hopi call the hunchbacked flute player common in Mesa Verde's Basketmaker rock art?

Basketmaker II artists drew animals and people in both abstract and realistic styles across the mesa.

The D-shaped Sun Temple is thought to have been what?

Its alignment is 10.7 degrees off east-west and tracks the major lunar standstill and the winter solstice sunset, watched from the biggest cliff dwelling across the canyon.

The Sun Temple is aligned to the major lunar standstill, which recurs how often?

The winter solstice sun can be seen setting over the temple from a platform across Fewkes Canyon.

Which mesa-top great house, the largest at Mesa Verde, is considered a classic Chaco Canyon outlier?

Construction likely began between 1075 and 1125, when Chacoan influence peaked in the region.

How do visitors enter Balcony House on a ranger tour?

Its 45 rooms and two kivas face east on a high ledge; toe-holds in a cliff cleft were the only original way in and out.

Which Wetherill Mesa cliff dwelling is the park's second largest, with about 150 rooms?

Built about 1200 and occupied until 1280, it was excavated from 1959 to 1961 during the Wetherill Mesa Archaeological Project.

Which third-largest cliff dwelling sits a short walk from the Chapin Mesa museum, near a spring?

It had 130 rooms and eight kivas and housed 60 to 80 people; the 2002 Long Mesa fire nearly destroyed it and the museum.

What distinction does the tower at Square Tower House hold?

It is a stop on the Mesa Top Loop Road driving tour.

Mug House, a typical cliff dwelling, packed about 100 people into how many rooms?

Its eight kivas were built wall to wall; alcove space forced far denser living than on the mesa top.

Which Smithsonian ethnologist led the stabilisation of the park's three great ruins from 1908 to 1922?

He reported curio seekers had broken walls and mutilated kivas; his 1906 dig found the site almost completely rifled.

What did wildfires between 1996 and 2003 reveal in the park?

The fires burned 28,340 acres, more than half the park, and also exposed 1,189 check dams, 344 terraces and five reservoirs.

The 2002 Long Mesa fire nearly destroyed the Chapin Mesa museum, which holds what distinction?

The Chapin V and Pony fires of 1996 and 2000 destroyed two rock art sites.

Which Native nation held treaty title to the Mesa Verde lands and traded Chapin Mesa in a disputed 1911 swap?

Superintendent Jesse Nusbaum later admitted the land the government gave in exchange had belonged to the tribe all along.

The 1920s Indian ceremony shows staged for park tourists were performed by whom?

Critics summed it up as the wrong Indians doing the wrong dance on the wrong land; they reflected neither Puebloan nor Ute rites.

Which 125,000-acre reserve on the Mancos River adjoins Mesa Verde and offers Native-guided cliff dwelling tours?

National Geographic Traveler named it one of 80 world destinations for the discerning traveller.

In which year did UNESCO designate Mesa Verde a World Heritage Site?

It remains the state's only World Heritage Site; the 1920s administrative complex became a National Historic Landmark in 1987.

What is unusual about the park's 8,500-acre wilderness area, designated in 1976?

The three small sections buffer the north and east boundaries; the whole backcountry is closed to protect the sites.

What is the highest spot in Mesa Verde, at 8,572 feet?

Elevations run from about 6,000 feet in the canyons; the mesa is a transition zone between desert plateau and the Rockies.

Between which two towns on US 160 does the park entrance lie?

The visitor and research center opened just off the highway in 2012; Chapin Mesa is another 20 miles in.

The park's early Puebloan reservoirs, such as Morefield and Box Elder, were built starting when?

Four reservoirs lie on an east-west line six miles long, suggesting a centrally planned system honoured by civil engineers in 2004.

The famous black-on-white pottery of Mesa Verde got its black pigment from what?

Neutron activation analysis shows most of it was made locally from Cretaceous clays of the Dakota and Menefee formations.

What is the geologically correct term for Mesa Verde, which slopes south rather than lying flat?

The park is really several smaller tilted blocks separated by canyons cut through the hard sandstone.

How large is Mesa Verde National Park?

It documents 4,372 sites and runs an Archaeological Site Conservation Program to look after them.

Which Depression-era programme built trails, roads, exhibits and buildings at Mesa Verde from 1932?

The 1958-65 Wetherill Mesa Archaeological Project followed with excavations and surveys.

The 1873 treaty left the Utes a strip of land how far north of the New Mexico border?

Most of Mesa Verde lay within that strip; an 1868 treaty had recognised Ute ownership of everything west of the Continental Divide.

What became the first pre-Columbian site in the US to gain federal protection, in 1889?

It came seventeen years before the park itself.

Where was Nordenskiöld arrested at midnight by angry locals in 1891?

There was no law against removing artefacts at the time; the outrage helped build the case for the Antiquities Act.

A ranger tour of the biggest cliff dwelling involves how many ladders and how much elevation change?

Tours run May to October, last about 45 minutes, and are capped at fifty visitors each.

What term do the Hopi use for the Ancestral Puebloans, meaning 'ancient people'?

The more familiar 'Anasazi' is a Navajo exonym often glossed as 'ancestors of our enemies'.

Who was the first archaeologist to formally excavate Cliff Palace, in 1906?

Sent by the Smithsonian, he found the site already 'almost completely rifled of its contents' by tourists.

Around what year did corn reach the Mesa Verde region, starting the shift to Basketmaker culture?

By 500 CE the bow and arrow had replaced the atlatl and pottery had replaced pitch-lined baskets.

What held Cliff Palace's sandstone blocks together?

Small 'chinking' stones were pressed into the mortar to fill gaps and add stability.

Roughly how many people lived in the Mesa Verde region by 860 CE, at the height of Pueblo I?

Large settlements claimed 15 to 30 square miles of resources each and were spaced about a mile apart.

According to the Cliff Palace page, how tall was the average man when the dwelling was built?

It explains the famously small doorways; the average woman stood about 5 feet.

How many rooms at Cliff Palace do archaeologists interpret as living quarters, based on hearths?

Each was thought to house three or four residents, with nine high storage rooms serving as granaries.

What weapon did the early Archaic people near Mesa Verde use before the bow and arrow?

The spear-thrower was being supplanted by the bow by about 500 CE.

A 1997 dig at Cowboy Wash near Dolores, Colorado found 24 skeletons with strong indications of what?

The small community seems to have been abandoned in the same period of drought and conflict that emptied Mesa Verde.

Roughly how many conifer trees were needed to build the great houses of Chaco Canyon?

Most were hauled on foot from mountain ranges up to 70 miles away.

The Navajo word Anaasází is an exonym usually translated as what?

Some scholars prefer the gloss 'those that do things differently', and Pueblo peoples generally reject the term.