Tuesday, October 1, 2024
The buildings are surprisingly well built, with some of the bricks looking like they were made yesterday.
There are several cliff dwellings in this valley.
The Rocky Mountains on the horizon.
Mesa Verde is in the southwest corner of Colorado and is right on the border between the desert and the Rocky Mountains. It's significant for the Pueblo settlements that have been preserved. Many of these settlements are built under overhanging cliffs, just like what we saw a few days earlier at Navajo National Monument.
We hadn't planned to come this far east and it was a last minute decision to do so. It was worth the extra driving time. We did a tour in the largest cliff dwelling in North America called Cliff Palace. It was built around 800 years ago but only occupied for less than 100 years. The main theory for it's abandonment was droughts and a drying climate.
We're staying in a town called Cortez a short distance from the park. The scenery changes abruptly here, going from dry and dusty desert to lush and autumnal landscape in the space of a few miles. An outer range of the Rocky Mountains is impressive on the horizon.