Mesa Verde National Park

• Getting There: From Santa Fe — Roughly 5 hours drive time | From Grand Canyon Village — Roughly 5 hours
• Fees (as of 2020): $30 per vehicle — 1 May-31 October | $20 per vehicle outside those dates
• Further Info: Mesa Verde National Park (https://www.nps.gov/meve/index.htm)

Mesa Verde has the distinct honor of being designated a UNESCO World Heritage site for its main attraction, the cliff dwellings it was created to preserve. It is a unique landscape shaped in part by its inhabitants who 800 years ago abandoned the homes they’d created for reasons we still don’t understand. The Ancestral Pueblo peoples dwelt for more than 700 years in the villages they chipped out of the mesa’s cliffs before spreading across the southwest to become the modern Puebloans of today. Left behind were their awe-inspiring stone communities in the canyon walls and the mystery of their departure.

It is these cliff dwellings that the park was created to protect. After the Long House dwelling was “rediscovered” by the Wetherills with the help of Ute member Acowitz, Gustaf Nordenskiold and others took to removing the artifacts found there. A number of people recognized the destructive nature of this sort of exploration and set about protecting the area from further damage. Their efforts lead to the creation of the Federal Antiquities Act of 1906 and the designation of the area as a National Park. This effectively ended the mass removal of artifacts found within. The park continued to ramp up its conservation efforts over…