Cliff Palace Trail

Cliff Palace is the largest and most famous of the Mesa Verde National Park cliff dweller ruins in southwest Colorado. The trail head is on the Cliff Palace Loop Road in the Chapin Mesa area of the Park. The Cliff Palace opens for the season in early April. It is one of the three major sites that require a $3 ticket for a ranger guided  tour.

The ranger lead tour takes about 1 hour. After an introduction at the overlook there are two stops, one to the left at the ruin level and one along the front of the site at a kiva. The trail down has a lot of rough steps and slides through some narrow openings and has ladders to climb up and down. If you have bad knees or hips, stay on top, the ranger advises.

One of the questions about the 600 or more cliff dwellings that are found in the canyons of Mesa Verde is why did they build here. The Ancestral Pueblo people who lived here are thought to have arrived as hunters and gatherers around 500 AD and lived on the mesa tops for several hundred years, until a burst alcove building that began around 1200 AD.

The ranger offered a possible explanation. In this period, resources began to become scarce. The cliff structures provided more security. They were difficult to enter and more easily defended. But in the end, this strategy didn’t work.  There is some evidence that the amount of domesticated turkey consumed declined in this era. There wasn’t enough corn anymore to feed the turkeys.

Another possible explanation is that they used the cliff dwellings more for storage than to live in, mostly still living on the mesa tops. Sheltered under the stone roof, the cliff dwellings were cooler in summer and warmer in winter if they faced the south.

The Cliff Palace contains 217 rooms and 23 circular kivas and is thought to have supported a population of about 200. As large as it is, this site was used for only 75-100 years. The whole Four Corners area was abandoned by 1300 AD and these sites lay vacant for centuries.

Looking closely at the stone work, a variety of styles of masonry are seen. It looks like there was no central direction to the work here, each family adding and remodeling in their own style. This contrasts with the more uniform building styles in the large structures in Chaco Canyon, in northwest New Mexico.

Looking back up toward the trail head area, the forest resources here are Pinon Pines and Utah Juniper trees. The canyons where the cliff dwellings occur are porous sandstone. Water seeping down through the rock loosens the grains and the cave like alcoves form. Only a few alcoves are large enough for a very large structure like Cliff Palace.

On the second stop on the tour, the group gathers around one of the kivas. The traditional interpretation of these circular underground rooms is that they are used for ceremonies. The Kivas seem to usually have a ventilation shaft, unlike most of the rectangular rooms. Around the circle, the columns supported the roof structure which included the entryway. Most kivas seem to have been entered from the top but a few have side entrances. We usually see the kivas without the roofs.

My thought has been that they would be more practical as shelters from the hard winters in this high elevation area. Winters are cold, there can be several feet of snow, and the earth contact insulation would moderate the cold. There are often tunnels connecting the fire warmed and well ventilated rooms with the storage rooms. Most of the alcoves used as living space face the south, taking advantage of the winter sun. There was an experiment going on in one of the kivas. Samples of the mud that could have been used as mortar were being tested.

At the far end of the Cliff Palace, the second level structures are visible. The fine stone work that was used here is also visible. Some of the structures at this end were reconstructed and stabilized by the Park Service.

The four story tower at the far end of the site has some artwork visible on the inside. At the very end of the tour there is an opportunity to lean in the small doorway and glance up. The interior and exterior walls of these structures were often covered with plaster which could be decorated. At most sites, the plaster is the first feature to wear away and we don’t see any decorative work. The climb back to the canyon rim includes two convenient ladders to climb. To the right on the way up are the seemingly treacherous toe and hand holds that the residents used.