Ancient Skywatchers at the Mesa Verde Sun Temple

The Sun Temple is one of ten stops on the Mesa Top from Pithouse to Pueblo Tour at Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado. The Ancient Skywatchers of the Southwest Exhibit at the Anasazi Heritage Center in Dolores, Colorado features the view between the Sun Temple and the famous Cliff Palace.

On the east side of the Sun Temple, there are views toward Cliff Palace. At the south end of Cliff Palace there is a tall square tower that has interior pictographs near the top. These pictographs can be viewed at the end of the regular Cliff Palace tours by leaning in the doorway and looking up. The Skywatchers Exhibit has some close up pictures of the pictographs.

A Skywatcher interpretation of these pictographs is that they are a record of observations of the lunar standstill. Every 18.6 years the change from north to south in the monthly orbit of the moon is a maximum and the Ancestral Pueblo Skywatchers seemed to be aware of this.

The Chimney Rock National Monument near Pagosa Springs, Colorado is thought to be a site where the lunar standstill was observed between the unusual Chimney Rock peaks.

There are boulders on the north side of the Sun Temple that allow a view into the interior of the structure where there are two circular structures. It is possible that the Cliff Palace view toward the setting moon during the lunar standstill passed between these two circular structures like a gun sight, similar to the view at Chimney Rock.

It isn't possible for visitors to see between the circular structures now, but researchers with survey equipment have made this observation.

On the southwest corner of the Sun Temple, there is an unusual depression in the rocks with rays radiating out. The trail guide for the Mesa Top Tour says that Jesse Walter Fewkes thought this small basin was a “solar marker”. It may have been a place to leave offerings to the sun.

On the boulders on the north side of the Sun Temple, there is a small circular basin. Researchers have found about 200 small basins like this at Mesa Verde and it may be a Skywatcher observation point.

During the winter, the Mesa Top Tour road is cleared of snow and there are ten sites to visit. This is a reasonable place to walk when other park trails are snow covered.

Sun Temple on the Mesa Top Tour

The Mesa Top Pit House to Pueblo Tour is a ten stop self guided tour that traces the development of building styles at Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado. During the busy summer, most visitors will move their vehicles between the stops.

In winter, the segment between the Square Tower House Overlook and the Sun Point Overlook is a 3 mile round trip hike on a hard surface that is cleared of snow and free from mud. One of the dozen or so ruins structures visible at Sun Point is the mysterious Sun Temple, visible on a point to the left of the famous Cliff Palace. It is another 0.5 miles of road past Sun Point to arrive at the Sun Temple.
 

Visitors enter the site from the west side and circle around to the south side. It is hard to see, but the overall structure is D shaped, has thick walls and most of the structure has a row of narrow rooms around the outside. On the south side, there is an indent in the wall with a small square opening on each side.
 

Looking in through the small openings, there are views on each side of the line of connected small rooms. There aren’t any apparent exterior doorways anywhere around the whole building.

Outside the southeast corner of the Sun Temple, there is a large circular tower. Along this same side, there is a good view of the Cliff Palace across the canyon.
 

There is a rock outcrop on the north side of Sun Temple that allows a view over the walls. On the interior, there is an open area with two circular kivas. No roof materials or household goods were found here, and it appears that this structure wasn’t completed before the entire region was abandoned around 1300 AD.