MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK + BABY

Part 7 in a series about exploring the American

By Tommy Nagle

March 23^rd, 2020

Just over 160 years ago, a physician, geologist, paleontologist and hipster-beard progenitor by the name of Dr John Strong Newberry, a member of the San Juan Exploring Expedition led by Captain John N. Macomb, jotted down the following:

“The Mesa Verde is, geologically, but a portion of the high table-lands which border the Upper San Juan; the northern margin of which is followed by our route from the ford of the Chama to the Mancos.”

This rather dry sentence isn't particularly notable, other than the fact that it contains the first official recorded use of the Hispanic name "Mesa Verde", though the way in which Newberry writes implies that the term had been in common use for some time.

As is often the case with human endeavours, the San Juan Exploring Expedition was tilted toward the military and political, rather than the more pure enterprise of simple exploration, its primary intention being to discover a path to move military equipment west from Santa Fé, New Mexico to Utah, and while doing so map unknown portions of the geography of the western United States.

As we all know, Mesa Verde means "I'm awfully hot waiter, could I trouble you for a sugar-free sparkling ginger ale with a sprig of mint and a little lemon twist?" or, more commonly and less hydrationy, "Green Table", due to the area thus named being generally verdant and, to a large extent, relatively flat.

Forty seven years later, in June 1906, Mesa Verde was designated a national park by President Theodore Roosevelt, principally due to the need to protect the area's unique ancient cliff dwellings, the dilapidated state of which you can see in the photos to the right. They are the reason so many people visit Mesa Verde, more on them and the Ancestral Pueblo people that lived in them later.

Dr Newberry never got to see the inauguration of the park, as he had died 14 years prior in 1892 at the age of 70. But then again, he never even laid eyes on the dwellings in the first place, having failed to find them on his trip back in the 1850s. He really missed out.

Mesa Verde sports five cliff dwellings:

Cliff Palace*

Balcony House

Long House

Step House

and Spruce Tree House.

The first three can be visited via ranger-led guided tours, and Step House can be seen self-guided, from mid-May to mid-October. In total there are over 5,000 known archeological sites in the park, with 600 of them being cliff dwellings.

*Surely someone's porn star nickname.

Photos by Thomas McKee, some time between 1890 and 1900

For the exorbitant sum of $7 we took the Balcony House tour, also called the Adventurous Cliff Dwelling Tour due to the fact that it "involves climbing a 32-foot (10m) ladder, crawling through a 12-foot (4m) long tunnel, and climbing up a 60-foot (20m) open rock face with two 17-foot (5m) ladders to exit the site."

We queued up and the ranger assigned to the tour went through the customary spiel. You know the sort of thing. Blah blah blah, please don't deface the priceless ancient artifacts, no, you can't pee off the side, don't fall off the ladder and die, the usual stuff.

A lady almost chickened out of the tour completely, as she wasn't really a fan of climbing up the admittedly quite tall ladder at the start. But we told her that it would be a huge waste of seven dollars and she'd regret it for all of 45 minutes if she didn't come. So she did. We're quite the persuasive types.

These places were literally built into the areas under cliff overhangs, so they're essentially inaccessible without either the aforementioned ladders or some major climbing skills, and once you get up to the main levels, you can see why the Puebloans chose these spots. Yes, protection from both predators and the elements is great and all, but did I mention the views?

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For dwellings that were abandoned in the 1300s, the structures have held up remarkably well, which is a testament to the original builders, as well as the people who have worked so hard to preserve them.

Part of the reason that they've survived so long must be that they're so well sheltered, but you can also see close up that the masonry really is of high quality, the stones being bound together with a thick clay mortar.

Many of the structures also have small balconies of sorts, covered in layers of wood and mortar, as you can see below. This all looks like a lot of work, making it all the more remarkable that the buildings were abandoned. We still don't know why.

These cliff structures feature plazas and storage rooms, as well as living spaces, often arranged around kivas, circular, underground rooms used for ceremonial purposes and political meetings. Typically kivas featured a fire pit and a sipapu, a small hole thought to represent the Ancestral Puebloan's place of emergence from the underworld.

Remember, these were built almost a thousand years ago.

Folks were smaller back then. The average woman was around five feet tall, with the blokes a towering five feet five inches. Most people died between 25 and 34. A hard life.

It's slightly surreal to touch the parts of the rock that have become smooth over time due to the touch of so many thousands of hands.

From the edge of the cliffs, you can see down into many of the cliff dwellings, showing how precarious some of them were. I hope those builders used safety harnesses.

Cliff Palace (remember him?) is the crown jewel of Mesa Verde, containing 150 rooms. It was closed when we visited due to rock falls (which seem to be a regular occurence) but we were able to see it from multiple viewpoints on the other side of the canyon.

Then we went on a little three mile hike to see the Mesa Verde petroglyphs.

It's tricky to see here - the evening light through the tree wasn't the most forgiving, but the collection of engraved images actually tells a story. I'll let the NPS website do the talking:

According to one Hopi elder, this petroglyph...may tell the story of two clans (the Mountain Sheep Clan and the Eagle Clan) separating from other people and returning to their place of origin. Notice the boxy spiral shape? This likely represents a sipapu, the place where Pueblo people believe they emerged from the earth (believed to be near the Grand Canyon). You can also see the head and arms of a figure, and on the bottom right, a possible Katsina clan symbol.

Some not so ancient (but perhaps ancient in vehicle terms) car badges from the parking lot. Get a load of that Corona. I wonder if you'll have a hard time selling one of those in 2020.

An aside: License plates in the US feature seven characters.

I wonder if they'll let you have COVID19...

That night, for reasons I can't really remember (probably financial) we decided to 'boondock'. For newcomers or those with short memories, boondocking is not some form of deviant sensual exploit, but rather the practice of camping in a wild place without any form of water or electrical hookups.

The above was our view from our campsite that night. In reality it was the side of a road, but still, needs must. And it was free! Thanks to the BLM.

In the US, the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, oversees 245 million surface acres of public lands. The agency manages 1 in 10 acres in the U.S., or about 12% of the landmass of the US. That's a little bit less than the size of Texas.