Cortez is the closest bigger town (one with grocery stores, fuel, etc…) to the Four Corners area, and it’s also the closest town to Mesa Verde National Park.
Mesa Verde is home to more than 600 cliff dwellings. During the summer season, visitors can tour several of them with guides. Only one or two were offered for guided tours during our visit.
We opted to tour Spruce Tree House on our own. It is the third largest and best preserved cliff dwelling in the park.
We hiked down to the dwelling on a steep paved path.
As we walked down the path, we noticed small sections of bricked areas. In the middle of this picture you’ll see a wall of rocks just above the tree line. These were storage areas for grains and other supplies.
Here’s a diagram of the entire dwelling which housed 60-90 people–about 19 households.
See the ledge around large round area in the picture below with the logs sticking up?
That’s the top of a kiva, a room used for religious rituals. All kivas are built virtually the same with six upright pillars, a firepit with a stone deflector and ventilation system, benches, and small openings for storage.
Visitors to the Spruce Tree House can climb down a ladder and sit in a reconstructed kiva. We climbed down and took a few pictures.
This shows one of the six pillars spaced evenly around the kiva walls.
Here’s a picture of the ladder (well worn by thousands of park visitors) with the fire ventilation system in the background. The system draws outside air and causes the smoke to rise out through the ladder opening.
This is a picture of the kiva roof. It was reconstructed based on archaeologists’ findings of existing kivas.
Back to the Spruce Tree House.
Here’s a picture of Rich standing next to a door so you can see how short the door is. I asked a guide about the natives’ height thinking that maybe the people were very short. I was wrong… She said that the men were about 5’6″ and the women about 5′.
The natives farmed the ground above the dwelling to raise their crops of corn, beans, and squash.
A cross section of the end of the house showing the utilization of rock and brick.