Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde

 Cliff palace is the largest single cliff dwelling community in North America.  The hike in to this area is relatively easy, but the hike out is very steep, using vertical ladders and steps from that time that were carved into the rock.

This complex has 150 rooms and 23 kivas.  A kiva is a circular room which is partly dug into the ground.  In the time of the Ancestral Puebloans, it would have been covered over by a roof made of logs and mud.  These rooms were used for ceremonies, meeting, and even living quarters in the winter.  There were also storage rooms, living areas, and open spaces.

The rooms within this community were not all built at the same time, and so there are variations in architecture and style - some are absolutely smooth, some are rough rocks, some circular towers, or square.  These areas were inhabited for about 100 years, and as families moved in, they would build onto existing rooms, on different levels, like terraces.  But they all fit together as if there was a master plan.  You can still see the black marks on the rocks from their cooking fires as there has been very little disturbance in the last 700 years.

To see all these structures, built into the overhang of a cliff 300 feet above the valley floor is truly remarkable.  To imagine families trying to meet their basic needs, farmers growing crops on the mesa top, women grinding corn and weaving, children scrambling up cliff walls thatare so steep they make me shudder  - what an amazing glimpse of history!