Mesa Verde National Park

Mesa Verde National Park is a very large park that is located in Montezuma County in Colorado and used to be the home of the Anasazi people many years ago. It is located in the southwestern corner of Colorado (Anderson) and since Mesa Verde is essentially a plateau, it got the name Mesa Verde, which translates to green table in Spanish (Anderson). This area was populated with juniper trees and and pinons and all of that greenery encouraged the Anasazi people to make their homes on top of the plateau and to farm the land (Anderson). The Anasazi people were an ancient people that were known for being nomadic and are best known for building their city in the side of the cliffs and amazingly, those buildings are pretty well preserved today in Mesa Verde National Park. These people have an interesting history and had invested a lot of time and energy into building their homes and after all of that hard work, they just simply vanished without a
550, the Anasazi people decided to settle on top of the plateau and started to farm the land (Arnold). This was a huge change for the Anasazi because they were typically nomadic and that meant they followed a particular food source and were constantly on the move. For them to settle down in one place for a few centuries meant that they could now farm and have a somewhat steady and reliable food source and they could still hunt as well. This meant that the Anasazi could live comfortably during the winter off of the crops they harvested during the warmer season and when they weren’t harvesting, they were weaving baskets and crafting tools from bone and stone and they even crafted beautiful pieces of pottery that had intricate designs all over them (Arnold). They were also able to gain various goods that weren’t available to them at the time by trading with other people that came from far away to deliver goods such as cloth (which was very important since it provided protection from the elements) and shells