Mesa Verde/Ute Reservation
(The following is stitched together from several blog posts, hopefully it's not too bad.)
A couple months back I took a long weekend trip to Mesa Verde and the neighboring Ute Reservation. I live in Denver - it’s about 400 miles by road to Mesa Verde. There’s lots of great scenery along the way, but by far the most beautiful was the pass above Ouray. The mountains are striking colors, and covered with lush vegetation. There are also hundreds of old mines around, many dating back to the 19th century. The area has produced millions of tons of ore over the years.
At the top of the pass I took a brief stop near this old mining building. The tailings from mines have turned the river bed a striking rust orange. Remediation efforts are underway, but it will take a lot of time.
Apparently I was not the first person to stop there. Good to know that Jesse been here too!
In the end it took about nine hours to get there. I just barely had time to book tours (required for many of the dwellings) for the next day and set up camp.
My first day in the park I got up at dawn and left camp to explore the park. Nothing is open that early, and none of the other tourists were up, so I explored some of the overlooks. I had all my food in the car, to keep it safe from bears. So I got to my first tour a bit early and had a bowl of cereal in the parking lot. This turned into a habit – in three days I had only two meals at the campsite.
The tours tend to be full, because they’re the only way to get up close to the cliff dwellings. Luckily for me the tour had only nine people on it instead of the normal 40 or 50. Even so, I had a difficult time getting the other tourists out my shots – I don’t think I would’ve gotten anything at all with five times as many people present. The tours are fun for the adventurous, involving steep stairs and some ladders. They’re not really dangerous – it is a national park – but it’s more active than anything I saw at the Grand Canyon.
The cliff dwellings are built into naturally formed cavities in the cliff faces. The cavities are caused by water seepage, so many of the dwellings have seep springs in the back of them.
The pit in the photo above is the Balcony House seep spring. At one time it would have been full of water, but the Park Service keeps it drained to prevent water damage.
The buildings are deceptively small. They usually have ceilings maybe five feet tall, and rooms covering only 25 or 30 square feet. The doorways are the size of a small window by today’s standards.
The inhabitants had no beasts of burden, so all the rocks, mortar and wood used to construct the buildings were moved by human muscle. It’s an impressive feat. I have to imagine this is one reason they had tiny little buildings.
After leaving Balcony House I toured the largest set of dwellings open to tourists, Cliff Palace. Unfortunately that tour was completely full, so I didn’t have the chance to get as many photos.
While researching my, I found that the park is a small chunk out of the surrounding Ute Indian reservation. Unsurprisingly, the ancestral Puebloans who built the cliff dwellings paid no attention to those non-existent divisions, so there are many dwellings in the reservation as well. The tribe runs tours by appointment. I had read good things online, so I decided to spend most of my second day in the reservation. I was a bit nervous when I arrived at the visitor center, which looked like (and was) an old gas station. The guides showed up a bit late. It turned out to be worth the worry, as my tour had only two other people in it.
The Ute expect visitors to be more physically fit than the Park Service does. The ladders are taller, and the ruins are more than 20 yards from a parking lot. This may explain why there are no crowds. We didn’t see anyone that wasn’t on the tour, which was great.
Although you cannot go just anywhere in the ruins, the Ute are much more permissive than the Park Service. You can walk on the ruins in most places where it is safe to do so, which makes it feel much less constrained and museum-like.
Many of the buildings in Mesa Verde National Park are actually reconstructions. The Ute do not believe it is respectful to their ancestors to alter the sites, so they have done no reconstruction and only minimal changes to stabilize the ruins. Even so, the ruins are in remarkably good shape.
The reservation was definitely my favorite part of the trip. If you’re heading down that way I recommend checking them out. The tours are not particularly well publicized, but you can find all the information on their website.
This is pretty much the end of the narrative - there are more shots from this trip (23 total) in my SmugMug Mesa Verde gallery.
I'd be happy to answer any questions about the area - obviously not all of what I learned from the trip fits into this post.
The forum rules prohibit C&C on the shots - but any C&C on the writing would be welcome. I'd also love any C&C on the shots, but please click through to the specific shot and leave comments there.
A couple months back I took a long weekend trip to Mesa Verde and the neighboring Ute Reservation. I live in Denver - it’s about 400 miles by road to Mesa Verde. There’s lots of great scenery along the way, but by far the most beautiful was the pass above Ouray. The mountains are striking colors, and covered with lush vegetation. There are also hundreds of old mines around, many dating back to the 19th century. The area has produced millions of tons of ore over the years.
At the top of the pass I took a brief stop near this old mining building. The tailings from mines have turned the river bed a striking rust orange. Remediation efforts are underway, but it will take a lot of time.
Apparently I was not the first person to stop there. Good to know that Jesse been here too!
In the end it took about nine hours to get there. I just barely had time to book tours (required for many of the dwellings) for the next day and set up camp.
My first day in the park I got up at dawn and left camp to explore the park. Nothing is open that early, and none of the other tourists were up, so I explored some of the overlooks. I had all my food in the car, to keep it safe from bears. So I got to my first tour a bit early and had a bowl of cereal in the parking lot. This turned into a habit – in three days I had only two meals at the campsite.
The tours tend to be full, because they’re the only way to get up close to the cliff dwellings. Luckily for me the tour had only nine people on it instead of the normal 40 or 50. Even so, I had a difficult time getting the other tourists out my shots – I don’t think I would’ve gotten anything at all with five times as many people present. The tours are fun for the adventurous, involving steep stairs and some ladders. They’re not really dangerous – it is a national park – but it’s more active than anything I saw at the Grand Canyon.
The cliff dwellings are built into naturally formed cavities in the cliff faces. The cavities are caused by water seepage, so many of the dwellings have seep springs in the back of them.
The pit in the photo above is the Balcony House seep spring. At one time it would have been full of water, but the Park Service keeps it drained to prevent water damage.
The buildings are deceptively small. They usually have ceilings maybe five feet tall, and rooms covering only 25 or 30 square feet. The doorways are the size of a small window by today’s standards.
The inhabitants had no beasts of burden, so all the rocks, mortar and wood used to construct the buildings were moved by human muscle. It’s an impressive feat. I have to imagine this is one reason they had tiny little buildings.
After leaving Balcony House I toured the largest set of dwellings open to tourists, Cliff Palace. Unfortunately that tour was completely full, so I didn’t have the chance to get as many photos.
While researching my, I found that the park is a small chunk out of the surrounding Ute Indian reservation. Unsurprisingly, the ancestral Puebloans who built the cliff dwellings paid no attention to those non-existent divisions, so there are many dwellings in the reservation as well. The tribe runs tours by appointment. I had read good things online, so I decided to spend most of my second day in the reservation. I was a bit nervous when I arrived at the visitor center, which looked like (and was) an old gas station. The guides showed up a bit late. It turned out to be worth the worry, as my tour had only two other people in it.
The Ute expect visitors to be more physically fit than the Park Service does. The ladders are taller, and the ruins are more than 20 yards from a parking lot. This may explain why there are no crowds. We didn’t see anyone that wasn’t on the tour, which was great.
Although you cannot go just anywhere in the ruins, the Ute are much more permissive than the Park Service. You can walk on the ruins in most places where it is safe to do so, which makes it feel much less constrained and museum-like.
Many of the buildings in Mesa Verde National Park are actually reconstructions. The Ute do not believe it is respectful to their ancestors to alter the sites, so they have done no reconstruction and only minimal changes to stabilize the ruins. Even so, the ruins are in remarkably good shape.
The reservation was definitely my favorite part of the trip. If you’re heading down that way I recommend checking them out. The tours are not particularly well publicized, but you can find all the information on their website.
This is pretty much the end of the narrative - there are more shots from this trip (23 total) in my SmugMug Mesa Verde gallery.
I'd be happy to answer any questions about the area - obviously not all of what I learned from the trip fits into this post.
The forum rules prohibit C&C on the shots - but any C&C on the writing would be welcome. I'd also love any C&C on the shots, but please click through to the specific shot and leave comments there.
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Comments
One thing, I've got a slight fear of heights. The ladders wouldn't be a problem but how were the exposures (meaning edges of cliffs) while wandering through the ruins themselves?
Well, the dwellings themselves are relatively flat. But they aren't called "cliff dwellings" for nothing, and the approaches all involve sharp drop offs. The one exception I can think of is Spruce House (I think that was it) inside the park.
As you might guess the National Park has very nice safety walls and handrails everywhere, so if that's enough for you to get by then you'll be fine. The Ute reservation has no handrails or walls whatsoever.
The following photo shows the top of the ladder to Eagle's Nest House. You then have to walk along that ledge to get to the ruins. This is the most extreme example, but the initial ladder to get into the canyon was comparable.
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