While staying at McPhee Reservoir near the town of Dolores, we visited Mesa Verde, altidude between 7000 and 8000 ft.
---Mesa Verde, which is Spanish for "green table", was discovered by local cowboys in the 1880's - a very important discovery, because it meant that there was life here in our country hundreds of years before the Europeans came. Other ruins were then discovered in succeeding years all around the area.
---Upper Left: one of the green mesas in the park.
---Upper Right: a view of "Spruce Tree House", built on a ledge in the mountain, beneath overhanging cliffs. On another ledge above it, you can barely see the remains of another "condo" group. "Spruce Tree House" is the third largest village in Mesa Verde - it had 129 rooms and 8 kivas. Some 60-90 people lived here at any one time. Each family occupied several rooms and built additional rooms as needed. Several related families constituted a clan, which was probably matrilinial, tracing descent through the female line. If the analogy with the current Hopi Indian practice is correct, each clan would have had its own kiva and rights to its own agricultural plots.
---Lower Left and Lower Right: views of the "condo" rooms, which went three stories high. The residents accessed their room by ladders. You can see some ladders which descend into other rooms. As noted in other dwellings of this type, the "door openings" are about two feet from the floor line of each level - to keep little children in so they wouldn't fall off of the cliff, and to keep little critters out.
