Visitor and Research Center - Plan Your Mesa

Photo: Will Thomas, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)

A stop on Mesa Verde Cliff Dwellings, a free self-guided tour.

Start here, right off U.S. 160 at the park entrance. Out front, Edward Fraughton's bronze The Ancient Ones shows a climber hauling a bundle of firewood up a cliff, which is a pretty good summary of daily life on this mesa.

Inside, rangers can tell you what is open today, and the exhibits introduce the people who built the cliff dwellings. You may see the older name Anasazi, a Navajo word often translated as ancestors of enemies. The park and Pueblo people prefer Ancestral Puebloans, and the park consults with 26 tribes whose ancestors lived here.

Mesa Verde became a national park in 1906, the first set aside to protect the works of people rather than scenery, and in 1978 it was among the first places named UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

This is also your last easy chance for supplies. Fill water bottles, use the restrooms and check which ranger tours you booked on recreation.gov.

Getting here: From U.S. 160 between Cortez and Mancos, take the Mesa Verde exit; the visitor center is on the right just before the entrance station.

Did you know?: This building, finished in 2012, also stores the park's museum collection of roughly 2.5 million objects and archival items.

Photo op: Frame The Ancient Ones with the mesa's cliffs rising behind the parking lot.

Nearby: Restrooms, water, bookstore and rangers. Fuel and full meals are in Cortez or Mancos; services inside the park are limited and seasonal.

More on Wikipedia: Mesa Verde National Park · Ancestral Puebloans

Visitor and Research Center - Plan Your Mesa

Stops on this tour