Mesa Verde National Park

High on my flat-topped mountains, which people call mesas, my green trees whisper stories to the wind. For a long, long time, I kept a wonderful secret. If you look closely at my steep canyon walls, you can see them. Tucked into the sides of my giant cliffs are villages made of stone, sheltered by the rock above. They look as if they grew right out of the mountain. Who could have lived in such a magical, hidden place? I am Mesa Verde National Park, and I hold the stories of people who lived here long ago. I keep their homes safe so everyone can see how clever and creative they were.

My story with people began a very long time ago with the Ancestral Pueblo people. Around the year 550 CE, they came to live on top of my mesas. They built their first homes by digging into the earth. These cozy homes were called pithouses, and they kept families warm in the winter and cool in the summer. For hundreds of years, they farmed corn, beans, and squash on my flat lands and lived happily. But then, something amazing happened. Around the year 1190 CE, they started building their homes in a new place—right inside the big openings in my cliffs. It was like living in a giant stone pocket, protected from the hot sun and the cold snow. They were master builders. They cut sandstone into brick shapes and stuck them together with mud mortar, which is like a special glue made from dirt and water. They built rooms for sleeping, rooms for storing food, and special round rooms called kivas for ceremonies. One of my biggest and most famous homes is called Cliff Palace. It has more than 150 rooms. The Ancestral Pueblo people lived in these incredible cliff homes for over 100 years, but around the year 1300 CE, they moved on to find new homes, leaving their beautiful villages silent and empty. I promised to keep their homes safe.

For many years, the cliff dwellings were my secret again. Then, in the late 1800s, local Ute people, who knew my canyons well, shared the secret with others. On a snowy day, December 18th, 1888, two cowboys named Richard Wetherill and Charlie Mason were searching for their cattle when they saw something incredible through the falling snow. It was Cliff Palace. They were amazed by the silent city in the cliffs. Soon, many people heard about the amazing homes and wanted to see them. To make sure these special places would be protected forever, President Theodore Roosevelt decided I was a national treasure. On June 29th, 1906, he made me a national park for everyone to share. Today, I am a special place where you can walk back in time, learn from the incredible skills of the Ancestral Pueblo people, and be inspired by the amazing homes they built together.