Sunday, August 08, 2010

Four Corners Furtherance: More of Mesa Verde National Park

Well I come from west Colorado
And I've wandered this world far and wide
I've lived for some years in the shadows
And my eyes are unused to this light

Steve Earle, "The Gringo's Tale," 2004.

I'd like to write that visitors to Mesa Verde National Park in Cortez, Colorado are greeted by Point Lookout, elevation 8,427 feet, which is pictured on the right. But besides the standard National Park Service "Welcome" sign, there is one of those omnipresent Barack Obama stimulus "campaign signs." I blogged about another such sign inside the park last month.

Welcome to Mesa Verde--home of Native American archaeological sites, mountains, and the high desert--brought to you by President Obama.

Before Obama, in fact, before the pueblos were built, the Basketmakers lived on mesa tops, often dwelling in pithouses.

I neglected to mention this in my earlier post, but particularly in winter, the pueblos were smokey places, the black streaks you see above the structures on the right are from fires set within the pueblos. In the early part of the last decade fire has swept through large swaths of the park, closing portions of it.

The dominant trees of Mesa Verde are Pinyon Pine and Utah Juniper.

In 1978 the park was declared a United National World Heritage Site.

Next: The Four Corners Monument is closed

Earlier posts:

Mesa Verde National Park and the Ancients
Gerald R. Ford Memorial Highway
Flatlanders battle the Rocky Mountains and a car gets altitude sickness
Buffalo Bill's gravesite
Buffalo Bill's Scout's Rest Ranch
My rattlesnake sighting

Related posts:



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