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In this show I wanted to share stories and whatnots about Mesa Verde National Park in the southwest corner of Colorado. I’ve been there repeatedly and have done escorted tours thru the Park but after a bunch of research a complete visit to the Park needs to start some 370 miles to the northeast and 7 hours away from Mesa Verde in Denver. Although the area we call Mesa Verde is thought to have been occupied between AD ~600 to ~1300, it wasn’t till the late 1880s a homesteading family, the Wetherill’s, moved to the Mancos Valley and began to explore the mesa. In December 1888 they came upon the first of many abandon cliff dwellings. It seems that when the Ancestral Puebloans left the Mesa about the year 1300 they walked away with only what they could carry, therefore much of their everyday lives was left behind. The Wetherill’s didn't pick the Mesas clean and there was plenty for the National Park Service to continue collecting since June 1906 when the park was established, the problem is that there is an extensive collection at the Park but most of it isn’t on display.
HISTORY COLORADO ONLINE COLLECTION
