BGuthrie Photos: CO -- Mesa Verde Natl Park

CO -- Mesa Verde Natl Park:

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. MESA_030530_018.JPG: Mesa Verde National Park
2. MESA_030530_023.JPG: Cliff Palace. This is the largest of the cliff dwelling villages in Mesa Verde.
3. MESA_030530_026.JPG: Notice how they built around the large boulder in the crevice
4. MESA_030530_086.JPG: This I love because you can see how they built the rooms around an existing boulder. The Park Service was concerned about cracks in the rock and tried to stabilize it only to find ancient signs that the Indians had tried to do the same in their time.
5. MESA_030530_099.JPG: Mesa Verde National Park
6. MESA_030530_118.JPG: Note the black stuff on the walls on the left. This is smoke from 60 years of campfires in the village.
7. MESA_030530_121.JPG: This is a kiva, the ancient ceremonial chamber of the Indians. Every village had at least one and Cliff Palace had several. There's a small hole in the floor called a sipapu which is the symbolic entrance to the underworld. The larger pit is a fire-pit. The large divide is an air deflector. Fresh air would come in the hole to the right of it, hit the deflector, and then circle the room instead of blowing out the fire.
8. MESA_030530_174.JPG: Two sets of ruins are in the cliffs here. One is in the middle section and then there's another just above and to the right of it.
9. MESA_030530_191.JPG: This is a pithouse, which the Indians lived in in the years before moving to the cliffs.
10. MESA_030530_212.JPG: Square Tower House
11. MESA_030530_237.JPG: Mummy House is the structure below the various scorch marks on the cliff wall.
12. MESA_030530_245.JPG: The structure on the top is called the Sun Temple
13. MESA_030530_246.JPG: I think this is the Oak Tree House ruin
14. MESA_030530_251.JPG: Sun Temple on the top, Mummy House in the cliffs. Sun Temple was a major undertaking. It is thought that people from all of the surrounding cliff dwellings helped with it. But construction basically ended before a roof could be put on as the Anasazi people began leaving the area. As the sign points out, "It is tempting to view the Sun Temple as the cliff dwellers' attempt to appeal to the spirits and forestall the total abandonment of their homeland. Though the structure appears ceremonial (nothing about the rooms suggests habitation--no doors, no windows, or firepits), its exact function remains a mystery."
15. MESA_030530_266.JPG: Sunset House
16. MESA_030530_270.JPG: I believe this is the ruin called Village of Fifteen Rooms
17. MESA_030530_286.JPG: Mummy House
18. MESA_030530_290.JPG: Note the burned timbers. The Park Service periodically has controlled fires in the area. Not only does this help keep the trees at bay but they also sometimes find new ruins by doing this.
19. MESA_030530_294.JPG: There are two layers of structures here. The upper ledge has something called the Fire Temple. The signs indicate there is no sign of habitation in this unit and they think it was used purely for ceremonial functions. The bottom ledge is the New Fire House.
20. MESA_030530_313.JPG: Sun Temple
21. MESA_030530_329.JPG: Spruce Tree House. Since a guided tour is not require for this ruin, it's one of the more popular sites. They've finished two of the kivas so you can see how they look. You can even climb down into one which is a claustrophobic experience.
22. MESA_030530_330.JPG: Bruce Guthrie @ Mesa Verde National Monument
23. MESA_030530_353.JPG: Mesa Verde National Park
24. MESA_030530_357.JPG: Spruce Tree House was one of the first the archeologists worked on analyzing. One of the earlier scientist decided to carve identifying labels in each of the major structures. Here you can see "No 1 House".
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AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Wikipedia Description: Mesa Verde National Park
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mesa Verde National Park is a U.S. National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado, United States. The park occupies 81.4 square miles (211 square kilometers) and features numerous ruins of homes and villages built by the ancient Pueblo people. It is best known for several spectacular cliff dwellings — structures built within caves and under outcroppings in cliffs — including Cliff Palace, which is thought to be the largest cliff dwelling in North America. The Spanish term Mesa Verde translates into English as "green table".

Geography:

Mesa Verde National Park is located in the lower south-western corner of the state of Colorado [show location on an interactive map] 37�11'02?N, 108�29'19?W (37.183784,-108.488687).

Elevations in the park range from about 6,100 feet (1,860 meters) to about 8,400 feet (2,560 meters). The terrain in much of the park is dominated by ridges and valleys running roughly north and south; many of these ridges peak at an east–west crest near the park's northern border which turns more northerly–southerly towards the park entrance. The northernmost point is 13.2 miles (21.2 kilometers) farther north than the southernmost; the westernmost point is 11.9 miles (19.2 kilometers) farther west than the easternmost.

Early history:

Spanish explorers seeking a route from Santa Fe to California in the 1760s and 1770s were the first Europeans to reach the Mesa Verde (green table) region, which they named after its high, tree-covered plateaus. However, they never got close enough to see the ancient stone villages, which would remain a secret for another century. Occasional trappers and prospectors visited, with one prospector, John Moss, making his observations known in 1873. The following year he led eminent photographer William Henry Jackson through Mancos Canyon, at the base of Mesa Verde. There Jackson both photographed and publicized a ...More...
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Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (CO -- Mesa Verde Natl Park) directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]:
- 2000_CO_Mesa_Verde: CO -- Mesa Verde Natl Park (178 photos from 2000)
- 1971_CO_Mesa_Verde: CO -- Mesa Verde Natl Park (21 photos from 1971)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [Indians] [Natural Beauty] [Park (National Park Service)] [Sunrise Sunset] [Display ALL Sunrise Sunset photos]
2003 photos: Equipment this year: I decided my Epson digital camera wasn't quite enough for what I wanted. Since I already had Compact Flash chips for it, I had to find another camera which used CF chips. That brought me to buy the Fujifilm S602 Zoom in March 2003. A great digital camera, I used it exclusively for an entire year. Trips this year: Three-week trip this year out west, mostly in Utah. Number of photos taken this year: 68,000.
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