[This is the final installment of a travelogue from our recent trip to national parks and one state park in Utah and Colorado. You can find the first installment here, the second installment here, the third installment here, the fourth installment here, and the fifth installment here.]
The last park we visited on our vacation was Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado. On the way to Cortez, Colorado, our base from which to explore the park, we turned off the main highway and drove to a site in Bears Ears National Monument called “Newspaper Rock.”
Newspaper Rock is a panel upon which people have carved imagery over the past 2,000 years. The panel is roughly 8 feet high and 20 feet wide. There are carvings by pre-Columbian cultures such as the Basketmaker, Fremont, and Ancestral Puebloan peoples. There are over 650 art designs on the panel, including pictures of deer, bison, pronghorns, human figures, and people on horseback. The images were created by chipping away at the outer layer known as “desert varnish.” The older images are becoming darker as new varnish develops.
Archeologists and historians are not sure why so many people chose this place for their imagery over the past 2,000 years. One theory is that the rock served as a message board for travelers.
Back on the road, we arrived at Mesa Verde National Park in the early afternoon. After stopping at the Visitors’ Center and getting useful tips on exploring the park from a volunteer, we headed up the main camp road to the mesa 2,000 feet above. The main road has lots of switchbacks and pull outs where you can view the valley below.
Mesa Verde is unlike any of the other parks we visited on our trip. Mesa Verde is not about a landscape crafted by nature, but rather about the people who lived on the Mesa hundreds of years ago. Mesa Verde is known for its cliff houses built in the years between 1200 and 1300. But our tour began in the Mesa Top Loop, where there were a number of archeological sites dating back to 550 CE where people lived on top of the mesa before building cliff houses on the walls of canyons. The first structures we visited are called “pithouses.”
The pithouses were built by nomadic people who took up agriculture and established small communities on the mesa. They built pithouses by digging out a room underground, covering it with a wooden structure, and then covering the wood with mud, as this illustration from one of the interpretive signs shows.
Transitioning to farming, the Pueblo people set down roots. They lived in communities of five to seven pithouses, raised corn, beans, and squash, and hunted for game.
Around 950 CE, the residents of the mesa began using stones to build their communities. They retained the basic layout of their homes, but used stone instead of sticks and mud to construct walls.
The structure above is the foundation for a tower. There were over 105 towers built at Mesa Verde. Their purpose is unknown. They could have served any number of purposes, such as defense, line-of-sight communication, astronomical observation, or for safeguarding resources. Some of the towers were linked to underground ceremonial chambers known as kivas, suggesting they may have been used for ceremonial purposes.
The photo below shows a kiva from around 1074 CE. Kivas were ceremonial sites, although they may have been used for other purposes as well. A kiva would have a flat, wooden roof with an opening and ladder allowing the residents to descend into the space.
As they learned to use masonry, the residents of Mesa Verde built more elaborate communities. The illustration below shows what Sun Point Pueblo, one of the last communities on the top of the mesa, likely looked like. It was a multi-story community that included a tower and kiva and had at least thirty connected rooms. It was built around 1200 CE. Archeologists estimate that only two generations used this pueblo before the community began using cliff dwellings.
Beginning around 1180 CE, the people on the top of the mesa began residing in dwellings they built into the cliffs of the canyons. Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling in North American with 150 rooms and 23 kivas, was home to 100 to 120 people. It measures 215 wide, 90 feet deep, and 60 feet high.
Cliff House was under construction from 1190 to 1280 CE. Imagine what an effort it took to construct the rooms. The residents had to haul in water and mix it with sand, clay, and ash to make the mortar they used to build the walls with stones they shaped by hand, using stone hammers.
Square Tower House, pictured below, includes a four-story, 27-foot tall structure that is the tallest standing architecture at Mesa Verde. Square Tower House is part of what would have been a larger complex. It has been stabilized by archeologists, but 90% of Square Tower House is original.
There are over 600 cliff dwellings among the 5,000 archeological sites at Mesa Verde. On our second day in the park, a wet and dreary day, we hiked down the cliffside to Step House.
Step House got its name from the stone stairway that descends from the top of the mesa to the cliff house below. Residents used the stairway (not the asphalt covered pathway we traveled) to reach the top of the mesa where they maintained their fields and hunted. Such stairways were not common. Access to most cliff dwellings was attained using hand-and-toehold trails that the residents chipped into the rock face.
Step House is unique among the cliff dwellings for a number of reasons. It is the only cliff dwelling that you can explore without being on a ranger-led tour (although a ranger was present to answer questions). More significantly, Step House offers a chance to see examples of dwellings from two separate time periods. The site includes several pithouses built around 620 CE. Archeologists identified six pithouses on the site that were part of a community of about 25 to 30 people. On one pithouse, the park service has built a roof of the type that would have been used when it was occupied.
The multi-level cliff house, known as Step House, was built around 1226 CE and was home to 30 to 40 people. The rooms were up to two stories tall and built to fit around the sandstone boulders and natural obstacles.
Step House included on kiva.
The walls of the kiva had been plastered and were decorated with a painted panel of bighorn sheep bounding across the scene. The panel was removed in 1989 to preserve it. But elsewhere in Step House you can see petroglyphs that the residents carved into the walls.
The residents of Step House moved away around 1300 CE, part a mass migration from the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde.
We returned to the top of the mesa along the same trail we used to reach Step House. I took some photographs of things I found of interest along the way, such as these wildflowers.
And these lichens on the rocks.
As we approached the top of the mesa, we came upon trees that had burned as part of a large fire that consumed the area years ago.
The last cliff dwelling we viewed was Spruce Tree House.
Spruce Tree House was occupied from around 1200 to 1280 CE. Spruce Tree house, which had about 130 rooms and eight kivas, was home to about 60 to 80 people.
It is the third-largest cliff dwelling in Mesa Verde National Park and is especially notable because it is such a well-preserved Ancestral Pueblo. Ninety percent of the what you see is original material, including plaster-covered walls, and wooden roofs. Although it is the most complete example of a cliff house at Mesa Verde, it has been closed to visitors since 2015, when a large portion of the alcove arch over the dwelling fell.
Around the year 1300 CE, the residents of the cliff dwellings left Mesa Verde, leaving their remarkable cliff dwellings behind. Why there left is a mystery, but it is posited that they migrated due to drought that likely caused a shortage of food and may have led to violent competition for scarce resources. It is believed the people of Mesa Verde migrated south to New Mexico and Arizona.
Epilogue
As we traveled through the parks on our trip, I kept thinking about our cruise last year along the Rhine River. We visited magnificent cathedrals and cruised a stretch of the middle Rhine that is a World Heritage site and passes over forty castles.
Europe has its castles; we have our national parks. Our national parks are a treasure that belong to the people. The 1872 legislation that created Yellowstone National Park, the first national park in the world, made clear why the park was formed – “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.”
The National Park Service Organic Act, which established the National Park Service in 1916, described the “fundamental purpose” of the parks as one “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”
Yet, our country’s leadership is squandering this incredible resource. Since January 2025, the National Park Service has lost nearly 25% of its permanent workforce because of mass terminations, early retirements, and deferred resignations. The backlog of maintenance and repairs at the parks exceeds $24 billion. Recently, the administration used $67 million of funds collected as entrance fees – funds that federal law expressly states are earmarked for the national parks themselves – to pay for beautification projects in Washington DC, such as the botched renovation of the reflecting pool and the gilding of four statues in 23.75-karat gold leaf.
With all this in mind, I have begun contributing to the National Park Conservation Association, which is the largest nonpartisan organization advocating for the national parks.