At Mesa Verde National Park, visitors can walk in the footsteps — and right into the homes — of the Ancestral Puebloans who lived here a thousand years ago. A trip to the park, located about fi ve hours north of Santa Fe, provides a fascinating, hands-on adventure in ancient history, complete with ladders, tunnels, crumbling ruins, and intriguing questions: How did the Ancestral Puebloans survive? Why did they build dwellings into the cliffs? Where did they go? The park lets visitors explore these and other mysteries on a variety of self-guided trails and ranger-led tours and at the site's archaeology museum. Families can check out artifacts, such as an 800-year-old sandal, then let their thoughts drift with the scent of pine across the mesa top, where the Ancestral Puebloans lived long ago.
THE STAR ATTRACTION
Touring the Cliff Dwellings
When they came to Mesa Verde about 550 A.D., the Ancestral Puebloans lived and farmed on the mesa top, raising corn, beans, squash, and turkeys. After 600 years, they began to build houses into natural alcoves in the mesa's 2,000-foot sandstone walls. Within today's park boundaries, they built 600 cliff structures, ranging from single storage units to multistory complexes.
On a cliff-dwelling tour, families can soak up fascinating details about the Ancestral Puebloans: how big they were (averaging a little over fi ve feet tall), how they stayed warm in winter (turkey feather blankets), and what they might have believed about an afterlife. Most of the dwellings have round, underground ceremonial rooms, called kivas. In the fl oor of some of these, kids can see a sipapu, a small hole that may have symbolized the passageway into the spirit world. Of the fi ve cliff dwellings open in the high season from March to November, the following three are the best bets for families. (Some tours require the ability to climb ladders unassisted. Tickets are available for $3 per person at the Far View Visitor Center.)
