Mesa Verde National Park

I worked at Mesa Verde National Park the summer after my freshman year at Reed, 1970. Things have changed a lot since then. There are a lot more facilities and there are now self-guided tours of the ruins. Since it was fall, Balcony House was closed and all the ruins on the Weatherhill mesa were closed. I'm not even sure the Weatherhill Mesa area was open in 1970. We started at Spruce Tree House with a self guided tour. We hooked up with a ranger who was giving a tour to two people and asked him a lot of questions. Spruce Tree House is actually a misnomer; it should be Douglas Fir House. From Spruce Tree House we walked out the Pictograph Trail which went along below the top of the mesa. It was beautiful and looked down into the canyon.

At the end you came to this pictograph. The National Park Service had some Hopis come in 1942 and interpret portions of the wall. It includes whipping kachinas (which should really be spelled katsinas since the Hopi language doesn't have a ch) which pushed the people on their migrations, various clan symbols indicating where clans dropped off and settled elsewhere and hand prints (similar to signatures), animals, people, etc. It's very moving to stand in front of something that was made so long ago. The trail had various interest points where the plants were explained and their uses. The trail returned along the mesa top.

We returned, grabbed our lunch, and headed out for a 2 p.m. tour of Cliff House. This is the largest structure in Mesa Verde. The same ranger gave the tour. Most of the cliff dwellings were located near seeps where water that soaked through the sand stone came in contact with shale which was impermiable. Things we learned included:

1. The people were burried in the refuse piles/middens in front of the cliff dwellings indicating their return to the earth.
2. The buildings were built haphazardly by different extended family groups.
3. The reason the Anasazi left is unknown but could have been draught, exhaustion of the soil from the farming, but not warfare. There is very little indication of defensive building or of people who died from war.
4. The women married at about 12 and had 4-5 children and were usually dead by 25. The men lived to their mid-30's.
5. The corn was ground with a sandstone "mano" on a sandstone "metate" which resulted in a lot of sand in the ground corn. Most Anasazis had no teeth left and many had evidence of severe abscesses.
6. The kivas were usually covered and the ledges were not used for sitting, but for the placement of ceremonial objects.
7. About 80-90% of the structures were in original condition.
8. One of the reasons for the cliff dwellings is that as the population increased, moving the houses off the mesa tops where they farmed increased the amount of arable land.
9. Cliff House had 23 kivas, many more than what would be built by the population of the grouping, indicating that it may have been a central location for diverse family groups.

Ouray & Durango CO

We drove from the Black Canyon of the Gunnison to Ouray, CO where our guidebook said there was an RV campground that was open. We are discovering that as you get past October 15, at least in the northern climes, the campgrounds close down. When we got there it was closed. We asked in the Visitor's Center and were told the only places to camp were USFS campgrounds which were primitive. We really wanted to hear Obama's address to the nation, so decided to rent a motel room (our first of the trip). We went into a motel newly purchased (last October) by a retired mailman and his wife. They were very nice, letting us plug Snoopy in. They were also pet friendly and had half-price tickets for the natural hot springs pool. They have had a hard time of it this year as tourism has really declined due to the cost of gas. We got out the swimming suits and went to soak, listening to locals talk about the ice park where during the winter people are taught to climb long ice faces. We watched Obama on TV and listened to the MSNBC analysis, still feeling nervous about the outcome of the election.


The next morning we got into the car for a drive up the "Million Dollar Highway," so named because there is supposedly $1M worth of gold dust in each mile of the highway's base. My father used to call this the "Million Holler Dieway," for the many people who died careening off the edge which is unprotected in many places. The weather was fabulous as you can see from this photo up the valley. Ouray is at about 7,000 feet and Silverton is at close to 10,000 feet. The road is carved out of the valley.

Once we got to the top of the pass we were in the Red Mountain area, home of the Yankee King Mine, one of the richest silver mines in history. It earned enough money that its owner was able to purchase his daughter the Hope Diamond. The Red Mountains, colorfully named Red Mountain Nos. 1, 2 and 3, are filled with famous mines that extracted silver, zinc and copper, though they are all closed down now.



We continued on over another 10,000 foot pass towards Silverton, CO, the terminus of the Durango and Silverton Narrow Guage Railroad, a real favorite with my father. This was the view from one of the turn-offs just before the pass. Silverton itself exists mainly as a lunch stop for the RR. We continued down 4,000 feet to Durango where we stopped to have the oil changed and the tires rotated on Snoopy. Bob went to play disc golf, but the course was again very rough and he gave up.


In the meantime, I went to the D &SNG museum and walked around downtown Durango, finding a real French bakery with delicious rolls and a grocery store to stock up on various needed items. When the oil change and tire rotation (the most expensive yet at almost $120) was done, we continued to an RV park at the base of Mesa Verde.