The cliff houses of the Mesa Verde National Park are the only place in the United States that is protected that is not for its environmental features. In the mountainous, inaccessible country south of Cortez, there are over 4,000 separate historic ruins, several of them vast structures put together under sheer, overhanging cliffs in narrow canyons. This is the most notable and much visited archaeological site in the US, due to the amount, the size and the excellent state of preservation of the structures, together with their scenic location.

The Park is close to Four Corners, the only point where four states meet, and the centre of former Indian civilizations - several significant sites are preserved nearby as well as the Hovenweep, Aztec Ruins and Canyon de Chelly National Monuments as well as Mesa Verde. Today, most of the region is still within Indian reservations; the Ute in Colorado and the Navajo in AZ, NM and UT.

Often, the land of furthermost southwest Colorado is high desert with bone-dry mesas and wide empty basins, but it becomes hillier to the northeast, as the foothills of the San Juan Mountains approach. The hills of Mesa Verde are formed like a comb, with a high ridge the North Rim running more or less east-west and many lengthy thin, wooded mesas extending southwards.

These have nearly flat tops but are divided by thin, often sheer-walled canyons that are very deep; it was in these well-protected narrow valleys that the Anasazi Indians built their settlements, during the period 550 to 1250 AD, even though most of the large buildings were build near the end of this period.

As with many other ancient societies of the Southwest, the Mesa Verde area was abandoned quite abruptly, around 1300 AD and it was not until late last century that their settlements were found again.

Sven Voiles is the owner of FotoColorado, which is a premier resource for information on all things Colorado. For more information go to: http://www.fotocolorado.com

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