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 House Plaza

The Far View Trail at Mesa Verde in southwest Colorado is a short distance from the main park road and can be accessed and hiked during the winter season. Bring snowshoes in mid winter as there can be several feet of snow covering the trail. I hiked on a 30 F degree late November day with one or two inches of recent early winter snow.

Far View House and Pipe Shrine House are the two large ruins sites at the trailhead area, across a plaza from each other. Far View House was named by Dr. Jesse Walter Fewkes during the 1916 excavation for the wide views of the Four Corners area. These views today can be more readily seen from the Far View Visitor Center to the north, than from the plaza area between the large pueblo sites.

Among the 40 ground floor rooms of Far View House are 5 kivas, but only the one outside the main walls is visible. The height of the remaining walls at Far View House limits the view into the interior. One of the invisible interior kivas is particularly large and includes some features that are seen in the kivas found at Chaco Canyon in northwest New Mexico.

There are a couple of places along the front wall where the doorways line up and there is a view through a couple of rooms. The location and size of Far View House suggests that it may have served as a public building. This is also said of some of the large structures at Chaco Canyon.

Pipe Shrine House has 20 rooms and is just a short walk south of Far View House. The walls on the south side are two courses thick and thought to be the most recent work. The Pipe Shrine name comes from a dozen clay pipes found in the large kiva during the 1922 excavation.
 

The north side of the site shows the single course walls that are considered to be the older style. There are six large and varied excavated ruins sites on the one mile Far View Trail. It is easy hiking with a lot to see.

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.

Pipe Shrine House and 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.