Mesa Verde National Park

About this place

Mesa Verde National Park is in Montezuma County, Colorado, about 17 km east of Cortez in a straight line, and is the only World Heritage Site in the state. It protects some of the best-preserved Ancestral Puebloan sites in the United States. Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt established it in 1906, and it covers about 212 square kilometres near the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. With more than 5,000 sites, including 600 cliff dwellings, it is the largest archaeological preserve in the country. Its Spanish name means «green table». Its best-known structure is Cliff Palace, one of the largest cliff dwellings in North America. Multi-storey stone houses, square and round towers and small windows hide in alcoves of red and brown sandstone cliffs beneath huge rock overhangs, looking out over green canyons covered in juniper and pinyon pine. Visitors drive the park roads to viewpoints over the dwellings and join ranger-led tours that climb wooden ladders down to some of them. The mountain road is long, so allow a full day.