Cliff Palace - The Largest Cliff Dwelling
Photo: Tobi 87, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
A stop on Mesa Verde Cliff Dwellings, a free self-guided tour.
End where many visitors' jaws drop. Cliff Palace is the largest cliff dwelling in North America, with about 150 rooms and 23 kivas, mostly built from the 1190s to the 1270s. Perhaps 100 people lived here, but its many kivas suggest it was also a gathering place for the neighborhood.
On December 18, 1888, ranchers Richard Wetherill and Charlie Mason, out looking for stray cattle, saw it from the rim across the canyon. A Ute man, Acowitz, had already told Wetherill about big ruins in this area, and Ute people knew these canyons long before. Years of digging and selling artifacts followed, until women's groups and scientists pushed Congress to create the park in 1906.
And the people who built it? By about 1300 they had moved south, joining communities at Hopi, Zuni, Acoma and along the Rio Grande. Their descendants still visit, and still call this home.
To walk inside, join a ticketed ranger tour.
Getting here: Drive the Cliff Palace Loop again to the Cliff Palace overlook parking, or walk the path from Sun Temple to the overlook across the canyon.
Did you know?: Ranger tours climb in and out of Cliff Palace on ladders, the same way people once used toeholds pecked into the cliff.
Photo op: From the overlook, late-afternoon light warms the whole alcove; wait for the shadows to slide off the tower.
Nearby: Vault toilets near the Cliff Palace parking. For food and fuel, head back toward Far View in season or out to Cortez and Mancos.
More on Wikipedia: Cliff Palace · Richard Wetherill · Hopi
Stops on this tour
- Visitor and Research Center - Plan Your Mesa
- Park Point - Top of the Green Table
- Far View Sites - Village Life on the Mesa Top
- Step House - Two Villages, Six Centuries Apart
- Chapin Mesa Museum - Dioramas of Daily Life
- Spruce Tree House - Life in an Alcove
- Balcony House - The Adventure Tour
- Pithouses and Early Pueblos - Before the Cliffs
- Square Tower House - The Tallest Walls
- Sun Point View - A Canyon Full of Neighbors
- Oak Tree House and Fire Temple - Fewkes Canyon
- Sun Temple - A Building Without a Roof
- Cliff Palace - The Largest Cliff Dwelling