Corn for the Ages

There isn’t much broken pottery to notice along the trails in Mesa Verde but the Chapin Mesa Museum has a good display. The interpretive information explains the experimentation and development of pottery from the simplest forms to the most complex. There are also explanations of the ingredients and techniques used.

There is a good display of corrugated pottery including how it was made. Corrugated is one of the most common types that a hiker might find on trails in the region around Mesa Verde. The information here says that corrugated pots were often black with soot, indicating that they were used for cooking. The sizes vary greatly and are globular of egg-shaped with thin walls. In the Mesa Verde collection there is one Red Ware example, with the comment that these are not common at Mesa Verde and was probably traded from southeast Utah or northwest Arizona. One of the sites to visit in the adjacent Ute Mountain Tribal Park is called Red Pottery Village, perhaps a village rich in Red Ware.

There is a special display of a pot that was found filled with 31 pounds of corn, the most ever found at one time. The pot is described as being of a type that was made between 1200 and 1272. This may be the Mesa Verde Black on White. The Anasazi Heritage Center Museum in nearby Dolores, CO has more information on the types of designs that are found in this area.

There was a small display of pottery shards on display at the Spruce Tree House site, though the ranger led tour did not call attention to them. These small displays are common at ruins sites in the region. I asked the ranger about pottery making sites at the cliff dwellings, as they are usually not pointed out, even though pottery is one the main artifacts that we see and it was widely traded. He said look for small structures that are soot covered on the inside and that there might be one to find at the Cliff Palace site.

Spruce Tree House in Winter

During the winter months at Mesa Verde, the popular ranger guided tours to Cliff Palace, Long House, and Balcony House close for the season. The Spruce Tree House schedule changes from a self guided trail to three guided tours per day.

The paved trail is cleared of snow and the groups are usually small compared to the crowds that visit during the warm months of the year. The ranger guided tour emphasizes that the people that lived here had adequate food, water, shelter, warmth, useful daily activities, entertainment, in short everything that we view as necessary for a full life. The architecture of the site is examined, including the eight circular kivas that served multiple functions in the community.

The Kivas are often described as having religious significance, based on their use by Pueblo People living today. Under the winter conditions that occur in mid January, with nearly two feet of snow on the mesa tops, the kivas are obviously a warm sheltered area to use during the most difficult weather conditions. One of the Spruce Tree House Kivas has been reconstructed so that visitors can climb down the ladder and get the feel for the inside. Mostly, we view the kivas from the rim without the roof. During the off season, the usual long line to climb down into the kiva disappears. This was my chance.

The Spruce Tree House reconstructed kiva seems to lack the fire pit and the small symbolic Sipapu but has the pilasters and a nicely constructed roof. It seems small once inside, but was probably cozy and warm and could accommodate a dozen people if it had to. Then bench like banquette is too high to use as a bench in this kiva, while at other kivas it looks like a good seat. Other reconstructed Kivas in the region include Edge of the Cedars State Park in Blanding, Utah, Three Kiva Pueblo in the Montezuma Canyon in Utah. There is a side view from the bottom of a Kiva at the Lowry Pueblo site near Pleasant View, CO. The most elaborate reconstructed Kiva is the Great Kiva as the Aztec Ruins in Aztec, NM.

Mysterious Spirals

One of the most common petroglyphs on the ruins trails in the Four Corners region is the spiral. Some of these are thought to be associated with observations of the skies, or they could represent a journey.

The panel on the popular Petroglyph Trail at Mesa Verde has several spirals. This panel is somewhat unusual in that there is some interpretation offered in the trail guide based on the comments of Hopi visitors in 1942. The spirals here said to represent the place of emergence and the end of the journey.

The Anasazi Heritage Center Museum near Dolores, CO has a good display of pottery and artifacts in a small museum. One of the unnoticed artifacts is a building stone with a spiral etched into it. The stone is described as being from the Escalante Pueblo, a modest sized hilltop site that is located on the same grounds as the Heritage Center. There are no other comments on what a spiral on a building stone might mean.

On the south side of Pipe Shrine House a similar spiral inscribed stone sits along the top row in the center of the wall. Pipe Shrine House is one of the six Far View Sites, an open air complex of pueblo and related structures. The Far View Sites are mostly overlooked at Mesa Verde, the large cliff dweller alcove sites attracting most of the attention.

During the winter season, the short road to Far View is closed but the trail can still be hiked. The snow was more than one foot deep in mid January. Previous hikers and at least one cross country skier had packed down a path. The walking wasn’t easy and snow shoes would have made the going easier.

The Large Alcoves

The large alcove cliff dwellings are the most compelling attractions of Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado. There are 2000 archaeology sites in the park and 600 cliff structures, but there are five large and spectacular sites that are essential.

Two of the large alcoves that can be entered are on the Wetherill Mesa side of the park and can only be visited during the summer months between the Memorial Day and Labor Day holidays. The Step House site trail head is near the parking area and tram loading area that provides transportation to the other Wetherill sites. Step House is a self-guiding trail with a ranger stationed near the site to answer questions. A highlight of the Step House site is the side by side display of the pit house style of living with the later masonry pueblo style. Most pit house dwellings are on the mesa tops, but apparently some were also using the alcove sites. One of the mysteries of Mesa Verde is why was there a burst of alcove building in the era just before the entire area was abandoned. One of the hidden sites of Mesa Verde and Wetherill Mesa is Mug House. There are no viewpoints for Mug House. Some special hikes were offered in 2006 for the 100 year anniversary of the park, but otherwise it rests unvisited.

Long House is the second largest cliff dwelling in Mesa Verde with 150 rooms, 19 kivas and a large central plaza. The Long House ranger led tour takes 1.5 hours and requires a $3 ticket from the Far View Visitor Center. After purchasing a ticket and driving to the parking area, there is a short tram ride to the trailhead. The final comments of the tour I took described a scene where large dances or ceremonies took place here with plenty of room for spectators along the canyon rim. The other site in Mesa Verde that seems similar is the Fire Temple site visible from the Sun Point overlook along the self guiding Mesa Top Tour in the Chapin Mesa area. One of the other trails in the Wetherill Mesa area is the Long House Overlook Trail, where a wide view of the site is available.

The Spruce Tree House is the easiest of the large alcoves to visit and is really the center of Mesa Verde. In addition to being the third largest cliff dwelling with about 114 rooms and 8 kivas, the Chapin Mesa Museum is located at the trail head and there is a snack bar, book store and gift shop as part of the visitor facilities. The paved trail leading to Spruce Tree House is open as a self guiding route during the mild parts of the year and is the only guided and free tour available during the winter months. The plants along the trail are identified with comments on their possible use to the people who lived here. Two 2.4 mile hiking trails, the Petroglyph Trail and the Spruce Canyon Trail also begin at the same trail head. If you only have time for a short visit to Mesa Verde, the Spruce Tree House area is the place to go.

Along with Cliff Palace and Long House, the Balcony House is one of three cliff dwellings that require a $3 ranger led tour to visit. Balcony House is often a highlight as it involves climbing ladders and crawling through a short tunnel. Balcony House is located along a loop road that includes Cliff Palace and the series of lookout points I call the House of Many Windows Trail.

Balcony House is not a unique in its size but seems to be a possible special use site. It faces east rather than south and has more difficult access than most sites. The rarely visited Inaccessible House in the nearby Ute Mountain Park is another example of a possible special use site. Balcony House is open for tours from late April to mid October, a slightly shorter season than Cliff Palace. During the off season, the loop road is closed to vehicles but can be hiked.

Cliff Palace is the largest and most famous of the cliff dwellings ruins sites at Mesa Verde and in North America. The visitor season for ranger led tours of Cliff Palace is early April to early November with the road closing in winter but the overlook still open to hikers. If you visit Cliff Palace only, it appears to be an isolated site, but when viewed from Sun Point, across the canyon, it is seen as part of a very busy area. There are about 12 different sites visible from Sun Point, one of the stops on the Mesa Top Pithouse to Pueblo self guiding tour.

Cedar Tree and other Towers

The cliff dwellings are the most spectacular sights at Mesa Verde, but there are also mesa top ruins to see. The Cedar Tree Tower ruins site is an isolated Tower and Kiva site a little north of the Chapin Mesa Museum and the Spruce Tree Ruins area. This site is probably often skipped by those in a hurry to get to the more spectacular cliff dweller sites.

The tower location has a good view down a deep canyon. The interpretive information at the site raises the question of why were towers built. There are a lot of towers in the region but the reasons for them are not clear. The Cedar Tree Tower is connected to the adjacent Kiva with a tunnel. We visit these sites mainly in the warm seasons of the year and forget that the residents had to endure the cold winters. Imagine a group of people sheltered in the Kiva under several feet of snow. A tunnel to a storage area with a way to get above the snow line seems like a practical arrangement.

Another tower that is easy to view at Mesa Verde is along the Far View Trail, a little north of the Cedar Tree and Farming Terrace area. There are several large sites at Far View, and I think it would qualify as a National Monument by itself if it wasn’t surrounded by the spectacular large alcove sites. The Far Vew Tower is a little north of Far View House on the loop trail. The Far View Tower is surrounded by 16 rooms and there are two Kivas nearby. The trail guide for Far View says that nearly 60 round towers have been found at Mesa Verde. The three mentioned here are mesa top sites rather than alcove sites.

The longest Kiva and Tower combination found in the southwest is at Badger House on the Badger House Trail in the Wetherill Mesa part of Mesa Verde. The tunnel was built digging a trench which was then roofed with poles, brush and earth. This tunnel extended for 41 feet.

Tower enthusiasts can find others in the Mesa Verde region. The Sand Canyon Trail in the Canyons of the Ancients west of Cortez, CO has one about 2.5 miles north from the south trailhead. Harder to get to is the Mad Dog Tower on the east side of Sand Canyon. The Sand Canyon area is very rich with small sites, at least 35 on the overall network of trails. The Hovenweep National Monument area is rich with towers, not all of them circular. The outlying Horseshoe Trail, Cutthroat Castle Trail, and Painted Hand Trail have good examples of circular towers.

Fall Color on the Prater Ridge Trail

The Morefield campground area at Mesa Verde has three hiking trails including the Prater Ridge Trail. The Prater Ridge Trail takes off from the south side of the campground area and climbs 675 feet up to the top of the ridge, and winds around along the edge. The other campground trails are the Knife Edge Trail and the Lookout Point Trail.

It is 1.2 miles to the start of the two hiking loops on top of Prater Ridge. The north loop is 4 miles and the south loop is 2.4 miles. There is a shortcut trail that forms the two loops into a figure 8. From the north loop there are good views of several ranges of the nearby San Juan Mountains and the Montezuma and Mancos valleys below. The south loop views are of the canyons along the main park road traveling toward the south part of the park. It is one of the few trails in the park that doesn't go past any of the 700 year old Ancestral Pueblo Ruins for which the park is famous.

In 2000, it was a bad year for forest fires at Mesa Verde. The Bircher Fire scorched the north side of the park near the Morefield campground. Mesa Verde means "green table" and for a while in 2000, it was a "black table". The Gambel Oaks are recovering, bushy new shoots sprouting up around the charred remains of the forest fire victims. These oaks don't grow very tall, they grow more like a shrub here. In the fall the oaks put on a good display of color. The Utah Serviceberry shrub also adds some yellow to the scene.

The trail mostly follows along the sandstone cliffs. I scanned the cliffs to see if there were any small ruins sites but didn’t see any. It is possible that the people that lived here came to this area for materials as there were some Douglas Firs in the shaded north facing pockets and the acorns from the Oaks were probably a food source.

Most of the charred tree trunks from the forest fires are still standing. Most of what is visible now is the colorful oaks. There are only a few pockets where the evergreen trees survived. When I’ve hiked the full 7.4 mile loop it has taken me 3:30 hours. Hiking just the shorter 3.7 mile south loop route took about 2:15 hours.

Inaccessible House Trail

Inaccessible House is located below the east rim of Navajo Canyon in Ute Mountain Tribal Park in southwest Colorado. It is rarely visited, but was included on a special tour along with the nearby Casa Colorado ruins site. The trail head is in the area south of the Mesa Top Tour at the south end of Mesa Verde National Park.The trail runs south along the Navajo Canyon east rim to an unnamed side canyon where the Casa Colorado ruins sits at the side canyon head. A rough trail descends into the side canyon and turns back toward the main canyon and runs under the rim. The Inaccessible House site is above the trail at a somewhat awkward viewing angle, and seems to be very well preserved.

At the canyon junction a short distance before the site there are some historic inscriptions from some of the early visitors to the area. This hike was guided by one of the experts in the history of Mesa Verde and there was a good discussion of who the inscribers were and what their roles were in the early history of the area.

The trail continues past the Inaccessible House site to another alcove that has only rubble piles remaining but also has a small reddish pictograph panel. The wrecked nature of this alcove site was attributed to rough use during the pot hunter era of the early 1900s.

Beyond the second alcove there is a small granary site. The trail along here was reasonably good despite not much maintenance over the years. The Ute Mountain Tribal Park has mostly left these sites in the state that they were found. Pottery shards are visible and remain in place as all hikes here are guided. I noticed a second granary site on the return hike near the inscription rock, so there are three intact ruins in this area plus the pictograph alcove.

Inaccessible House doesn’t appear to be a place that anyone would have resided in, maybe it is a special use site. It is hard even to see it. There isn’t any room to step back and get a good view. Our tour group visited this site and those with enough energy left continued on to nearby but harder to get to Casa Colorado. The total tour took about 6:30 hours with about half the time spent at each of the two sites. The distance covered was about 3 miles but the route was somewhat difficult and required some scrambling up and down in the rocky environment.