Mesa Verde History

Pueblo Indians farmed the mesa tops in what is now Mesa Verde National Park from A.D. 500 to A.D. 1300. Visitors to the Park may tour early pithouses and late cliffdwellings for a first hand look at the changes which took place in Puebloan architecture and culture over time. A museum on Chapin Mesa exhibits the ceramics and other objects from the daily life of a people who treasured beauty in everything around them.

By the late 1890s looters from near and far were destroying the irreplacable cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde, and many more ruins in the area, in search of artifacts to sell to collectors around the world. The Colorado Federation of Women's Clubs began a campaign, led by tireless women from the San Juan Country, to save the ruins. Congress created Mesa Verde National Park in 1906 out of part of the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation and the Utes were given Sleeping Ute Mountain to the west in exchange for land taken for the park. At the same time that the park was created, Congress passed the Antiquities Act of 1906, making it illegal to damage archaeological sites on any public lands or to remove artifacts from them. The women of Colorado had achieved a significant victory for preservation of the state's past. Mesa Verde National Park is now designated by UNESCO as a World Cultural Heritage Site.

-Text and Photos, Courtesy of A Historical Touring Guide to the San Juan Skyway