After breakfast, we drove directly to Mesa Verde National Park. We saw Cliff Palace, Spruce Tree House, and so many more ruins. “The Ancestral Pueblo people made Mesa Verde their home for over 700 years, from AD 600 to 1300. The park protects nearly 5000 archaeological sites, including 600 cliff dwellings. They are some of the best preserved in the United States.” In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt established Mesa Verde National Park to “preserve the works of man,” the first national park of its kind. We stopped at numerous overlooks and used our binoculars to get better views. We had a memorable morning!
We ate lunch at a farm to table bistro in Cortez. Our next stop was about an hour north, at Lowry Pueblo in Canyon of the Ancients National Monument, proclaimed a National Monument in 2000. “The Monument contains the highest known archaeological site density in the United States. The landscape contains more than 6450 recorded sites reflecting past human life in villages, field houses, reservoirs, great kivas, cliff dwellings, sacred springs, agricultural fields, and petroglyphs. Some areas have more than 100 sites per square mile. The Monument has been used by humans for 10,000 years, and continues to be used for recreation, hunting, livestock grazing, and energy development.” We had Lowry Pueblo to ourselves!
Next stop... Hovenweep National Monument! “Human habitation at Hovenweep dates to over 10,000 years ago when nomadic peoples visited the Cajon Mesa to gather food and hunt game. By about AD 900, people started to settle at Hovenweep year round. By the late 1200’s, the area was home to over 2500 people. They worked the land, creating terraces for growing crops and catch basins to hold storm run off. They built storage granaries under the canyon rims to protect their harvests of corn, beans, and squash. By the early 1300’s a long drought forced the people to move. The Pueblo, Zuni, and Hopi are descendants of the culture.” Hovenweep became part of the National Park System in 1923. Sleeping Ute Mountain is in the distance.
We drove lots of miles on gravel roads today, stopping in Bluff, Utah for the night. What a beautiful place, with the San Juan River running through town and big, colorful bluffs on either side of the river.
