Far View Sites Trail

The Far View Sites Trail at Mesa Verde National Park is a 1 mile loop that has several large pueblo structures to see and a water management reservoir. There are several large structures here within a very short distance.

The Far View sites could be a National Monument on their own if they weren’t part of the greater Mesa Verde community. The Far View Trail is on Chapin Mesa along the main park road, a short distance past the Far View Visitor Center.

The trail starts in a plaza between the impressive Far View House to the north and Pipe Shrine House to the south. There are several interpretive signs and a trail guide available. The Far View name was inspired by the commanding view of the surrounding Four Corners country side.

The Far View site was two stories and has 40 rooms on the ground floor. The large size of the structure suggests that Far View Houses may have been a public building, where leaders addressed the needs of the larger community. This was one of the most densely populated areas of Mesa Verde.

On the south side of the plaza is Pipe Shrine House, named for a dozen decorated clay pipes found in a kiva.

Pipe Shrine House has 20 rooms on the ground floor and may have had a second story. At Pipe Shrine House the interpretive information points out the differences in building styles of the walls. The single course walls on the north side contrast with the double course construction on the south side.

The double course construction is a later style, and is probably associated with multiple stories. The environment here is Pinon Pine and Juniper trees mixed with the aromatic Big Sage Brush on a mesa top setting, with good canyon views a short distance away.

Walking around the south end of Pipe Shrine House the view back towards Far View House gives a feeling for how busy this area must have been. Look for a spiral petroglyph in one of the building stones on the back side of Pipe Shrine House.

A little north along the trail is Far View Tower. This site has 16 small one story rooms, three kivas and a round tower. The single story rooms are single course construction but the tower is double course. The function of towers is a mystery. Modern Pueblo People still use kivas but not towers. There are nearly 60 towers at Mesa Verde. This one doesn't appear to be positioned as a lookout point, as some of them are. Sometimes there are tunnels connecting towers to kivas.

A little bit off the trail to the east there are far views across the canyon toward the LaPlata Mountains that are between Mesa Verde and the Durango area.

Far View Reservoir, formerly called Mummy Lake is one of four constructed reservoirs at Mesa Verde and the only one that is accessible. The alcove sites often have seep springs or the canyon bottom creeks for water supply but a mesa top site would have had to try to store the snow melt and summer storm water. The clay rich soil here probably compacted well to seal the bottom, but the evaporation is high in the sunny southwest.

Earth lagoons are common in this region. It seems like the rock walls surrounding the lake would have been more to prevent erosion around the edges than to hold water. The sandstone itself is porous and the mortar would have leaked if constantly exposed to water.

I was surprised to see that the American Society of Civil Engineers presented an award in 2004 to the Mummy Lake reservoir built 700 years ago. There is a constructed channel that collects water from the uphill area to the north.

Water is diverted into the reservoir in a way that allows the silt to settle in the channel, leaving the reservoir water fit for drinking.

Further north the trail leads to Megalithic House, named for the larger stones used. Megalithic stones are also visible at Long House on Wetherill Mesa.

The trail loops back south to Coyote Village. The interpretive information here points out how the village grew over time. The clues for this are how the wall construction varies and how the wall joints are arranged.

The Coyote Village has 30 ground floor rooms, five kivas, and a circular tower. This site is just to the south of the Far View House and can be an overlooked site on an overlooked trail. This is a site where the arrangement of walls is observable. Some walls are tied together and some just abut one another, indicating original construction and later add on building.

There is a vague trail along the east side of Far View House that gives views into Soda Canyon from the Chapin Mesa rim. Following this trail to the south leads to some of the 50 or so unexcavated villages that were part of the Far View Community. At least one appears as a large rubble pile and there are smaller less conspicuous sites.

Far View Trail in Winter

The Far View Trail is about a 1 mile loop that leads to six mesa top sites at Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado. During the winter months the short road and trail are not cleared of snow but it is still available for visiting.

During February 2010, the snow at Far View was so deep it nearly covers the interpretive signs, so bring your snow shoes. It is about 0.25 miles from the main park road to the open plaza area between Far View House and Pipe Shrine House. The Far View Trail is flat, without any hidden hazards. The Far View sites are very good, but they seem to be ignored in favor of the spectacular cliff dweller sites for which Mesa Verde is most famous.

The interpretive sign at my feet describes how Far View was first investigated by Jesse Fewkes in 1916. Dr. Jesse Fewkes first arrived at Mesa Verde in 1907 as the primary archaeologist.

Pipe Shrine House is just a short walk south of Far View House. The low walls of Pipe Shrine were nearly covered completely, with only the kivas showing much of the stonework. Far View was one of the most densely populated areas of Mesa Verde with 50 villages within a square half mile. Only six are excavated for visitors.

The Far View Tower is a short distance north of Far View House. There is a tower and kiva combination here that draws interest. Some of the towers are positioned with good views so that they appear to be lookout towers. The Far View Tower is not positioned with a good view. Looking at it in winter with several feet of snow on the ground, it looks like a place to store food and fuel while taking refuge in the earth contact kiva. The elevated structure would also be a place to get out above the snow line on a sunny day like this one.

I continued north to the Mummy Lake Reservoir to find it completely filled with unmelted snow with only a few of the stones visible. No one else had hiked that far since the most recent snow. The snow surface was a little soft and I was sinking in 6” or so on most steps. Mummy Lake is one of four constructed reservoirs at Mesa Verde and the only one that is accessible.

I didn’t try to get to the small Megalithic House site. I made it to the Coyote Village site to the south of Far View House. No one else had tried to go there either and it was hard to see where the trail was, but I knew the way from previous visits.  I spent about 1:00 hour in the deep snow Far View area on a 30 F degree early February day.

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.

The Sun Temple site on the Mesa Top Pithouse to Pueblo Tour has a large circular tower.

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.