Badger House Trail on Wetherill Mesa

The Badger House Trail is a 0.75 mile one way paved route that visits four sites on Wetherill Mesa in Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado. These sites trace some of the development in architecture and living styles of the Ancestral Pueblo People who lived here until mysteriously vanishing around 1300 AD. There is a trail guide with 13 stops and there are also interpretive signs along the trail.

You can hike through the burned forest to the trail head for the Badger House Trail which is about 0.5 miles from the tram parking area. The Nordenskiold No. 16 Trail is in the same vicinity. The tram also stops at both ends of the trail.

The first stop on the trail is the Pithouse from about 650 AD. This structure marked the change in life style from nomadic hunting to permanent habitation. This example has a large room and an area that is thought to be for storage. These were covered over with a wood frame and plastered with mud. The entrance was through the roof.

The second site to visit is the Pueblo Village. From about 750 AD the storage rooms began expanding into several rooms. These structures were more adobe with the beginnings of rock masonry that developed later. This site has a Great Kiva where the soil layers tell some of its story. The size of this Kiva indicates that is was probably a center for a wider group of people that just this set of room blocks.

The Badger House site, the third of the four on this trail, has the longest kiva and tower tunnel connection yet to be found in the southwest.

The tunnel here extends for 41 feet. The connection of kivas with towers seems to be common but it is not known why. Current day Pueblo people still use kivas but not towers. The stone work here is thought to be from the 1200s.

The confusing arrangement of walls is explained as a site that was built on top of an older site. It is thought that much of the above ground material was moved elsewhere, maybe to Long House.

Two Raven House is the last site on the Badger House Trail. This site is thought to have been occupied from the 900s to the 1100s. It has two unusual features. There is a small circular room that resembles a miniature kiva. Some sites have great kivas but this is a rare mini kiva. There is also evidence for a fence built around the plaza area, maybe as a windbreak, or to fence in or out their domestic turkeys.

Hikers can return to the trailhead on foot or catch the tram at the end of the trail. There are two short overlook trails to Kodak House and Long House that can only be reached by riding the tram. Hiking from the Wetherill Kiosk and returning, without other stops took me 1:10 hours.