Tonight there is a Harvest Moon (a full moon that is closest the earth). After the tour, I got out my tripot, and took some good shots of it.

Mesa Verde is very interesting to me because there is evidence of civilization occupying the sites since year one (literally). The stages of civilization are all here. Hunters and gatherers, then what they called the basket maker period, when these people were starting to do agriculture,  they moved closer to their fields as the crops became more important to their livelihood. Corn and squash were grown. Dogs and turkeys were domesticated, and later, beans were added to the crops that were grown. Pottery, was introduced from interaction with other peoples, and began to replace baskets as cooking vessels and for other use. Basketmaking declined, and the quality of baskets also declined which I find weird. Maybe it was over a long time so the really good basketmakers died and the younger ones didn’t learn how because of the switch to pottery. But, it seems to me, that baskets would always be useful. They certainly are now.

Mesa Verde (Spanish for Green Table) is a World Heritage site, the nation’s richest archeological preserve. Mesa Verde is located high above the valley on Mesas, 5000-6000 ft. elevation in the 4 corners part of the US. where four states come together, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. Below, nine miles to the north is the town of Cortez.


Balcony House, one of the largest groups of cliff houses

I have paraphrased some of the house building history from the Park brochure:
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1400 years ago, the ‘basket makers’ as they were called because of their skill in basketry, formerly nomadic, started to lead a more settled life, farming beginning to replace hunting and gathering as their main livelihood. They lived in pit houses on top of the mesas and sometimes in the cliff recesses. They learned to make pottery, and acquired the bow and arrow replacing the atlatl, a spear thrower.

About the year 750, they started to build houses above ground with the pithouses clustered together with adjoining walls in long curving rorws. From then on, these people are known as Pueblos, a Spanish wrod meaning “village dwellers’.

By 1100, the houses were advanced from the pole and adobe construction to skillfull stone masonry. Walls of thick double coursed stone often rose two of three stories high and were joined together into units of 50 or more rooms.

The Farview sites, a complex of 4 large pueblos or houses, each one had many rooms. There were several groupings of pueblos above ground with the double course masonry and had at one time, adobe roofs supported by timbers. Presumably some  of the rooms were for storage, some for living. some had doorways into them, and some did not, perhaps the entrance was thru a ventilation hole in the roof and a ladder down into it like the earlier pit houses.

The Farview sites

Also on the Farview site was the most amazing, thing, one of four reservoirs! Used for storing water for use by the group. The water was used for personal use, not crop watering. A canal ran about a mile from a spot that now has the visitor center on it to this reservoir!

The crops of corn, beans and squash were watered by the  average of 18 inches of precipitation on the mesa tops. Corn requires 78 frost free days and the mesa top has an average of 85 frost free days.

1500 year old drought resistant corn, grown here, in a demonstration garden in the museum courtyard.

About 1200 there was a major population shift back into the cliff alcoves that sheltered their ancestors before. This gave rise to the cliff dwellings for which Mesa Verde is so famous.

Balcony House

Balcony house entrance from mesa top via toe holds down through crevice. We used the ladder placed there for us by the park service. Even then, it was steep and nearly inaccesable!

Ancestral Puebloans lived in the cliff dwellings for less than 100 years. By about 1300 Mesa Verde was deserted. When the cliff dwellers left, they traveled south into New Mexico and Arizona settling among their kin who were already there. Whatever may have happened, some of today’s Pueblo people, and maybe other tribes, are descendants of the cliff dwellers of Mesa Verde.
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The sunset tour of Balcony House lasted late and it was dark by the time I drove the 16 miles back to the campground. The road is being repaved, and it was a delight to drive alone on the new pavement. No traffic, no cars at all, compared to stopping for the roadwork earlier this afternoon. Crossing my headlights were a rabbit and farther along, a coyote shied back by the side of the road, letting me pass before he crossed. One rabbit who was trying to cross the road, turned back when it saw the headlights. I wonder if it knows how to cross? It sure seemed to. The full moon is slightly misted over with high clouds tonight, but it is warmer (60 degrees) and beautiful.