Mesa Verde

Mesa Verde in Montezuma County, Colorado is one of the most fantastic and thought provoking sites the United States’ National Parks has to offer. First inhabited about 9500 years ago, it is most well known for the feats that the Pueblo created at the sites across the park. With about 5,000 archaeological sites and 600 dwellings, it is archaeological goldmine that gives us a glimpse into the culture and life of original inhabitants in the Americas. (nps.gov). Although we don’t know exactly why they chose to leave this area after sustaining for about 700 years, we have good ideas about how they continued to live year after year and what type of innovations they made with the supplies they had. When the Spanish explorers first discovered the
This then became the first layer of rock that formed the Mesa Verde National Park that we know today. As the sea continued to progress away from the site, deposits of shale formed a Mancos shale layer of rock. “This shale forms the low hills you see at the base of the mesa in the Montezuma Valley” (Pg. 5, Geology of Mesa Verde). Above this rock layer is a group of rock formations known as the “Mesa Verde” group. Within this group are Point Lookout, Menefee, and Cliff House Sandstone. After the Western Interior Seaway left the area, shale and sandstone deposits about the Cliff House sandstone began to erode and formed some types of volcanic activity. This gave way to the Laramide Orogeny, or the mountain building stage in this area of North America. The Rocky Mountains developed during this stage. And interestingly the mountains the Sleeping Ute and La Plata mountains, which can be seen from the park, were formed. This park as a whole is credited completely to millions of years of erosion. “Without the erosion and down cutting that occurred in the area, the beautiful canyons would not exist. The Ancestral Puebloans would not have been able to inhabit the cliffs that these canyons created. Their lives were undeniably intertwined with the earth and all of nature surrounding them. If not for the amazing combination of geological processes at
By the ninth century, water reservoirs were developed. This was not as prominent as dry farming, which relied on rainwater to accumulate and help their plants grow. They also continued to hunt small animals for meat, and maize being their prominent crop of choice. At the end of the 8th century they were starting to build water reservoirs. Two of the reservoirs, known as the Far View and Sagebrush reservoirs, are the best known and were built on the top of the mesa. They were approximately 90 feet, and ran for about 6 miles. (Agriculture and Water Control, Wikipedia). With water from rain in the summer and snowfall during the winter, agriculture could be sustained through knowledgeable farming