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The Mysterious Anasazi Cliff Dwellings at Mesa Verde,

© Brian Salisbury

As the story goes, just a few days before Christmas in 1888, two cowboys were crossing Mesa Verde, Colorado, looking for stray cattle in the snow-covered forest. They stopped their horses at the edge of a canyon and gazed at the cliffs below. Through the swirling snow and thick covering of trees, they saw what appeared to be “a magnificent city” levitating within the vertical sandstone walls.

It was not an apparition. The two men had discovered the Cliff Palace of the Anasazi.

I would have enjoyed a similar snow-shrouded first encounter with the Cliff Palace. However, seeing it in the bright sun as I did, highlighted the way the structure blends into its surroundings and becomes part of the land.

A side trip on the way to Durango.

My opportunity to visit this architectural wonder came during a motorcycle trip through New Mexico and Colorado. After crossing into southwestern Colorado on Route 666, I turned east on Route 160 in the town of Cortez and headed toward Durango. I had gone about ten miles when I saw the entrance to Mesa Verde National Park and decided to take a side trip.

The park is located in high plateau country and, along with Cliff Palace, contains the finest examples of cliff dwellings in the United States, perhaps the world.

About 1,400 years ago, thousands of Anasazi people occupied the Mesa Verde area. For nearly 700 years, they lived in individual stone dwellings and elaborate communal structures.

More than 1,000 stone structures.

These structures evolved from simple subterranean pit houses on top of the mesa, into complex cliff dwellings built into caves. Mesa Verde contains more than 1,000 pit houses, cave dwellings other structures located above and beneath overhanging cliffs and in sheltered canyon alcoves.

The people created cave dwellings by “renovating” existing caves or by excavating into the sandstone canyon walls to create new living spaces. Then they would build rooms and structures out of sandstone blocks within these open areas.

The Anasazi began using the cliffs for shelter when they first moved onto the mesa around A.D. 500. However, they built and lived in the most elaborate structures like Cliff Palace for only about 100 years -- two generations -- before they deserted the area around A.D. 1300. They embarked upon and completed this massive construction project then, for no apparent reason, abandoned the region.

Why the Anasazi disappeared is a mystery.

After flourishing for hundreds of years, the Anasazi vanished suddenly and mysteriously, leaving behind these magnificent examples of their culture.

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