Just south of Durango, Colorado, between Cortez and Mancos, you will find 50,000 acre Mesa Verde National Park. It is the only National Park in the system wholly dedicated to cultural resources.

Mesa Verde, Spanish for green table, offers an amazing look into history. The mesa cradles some of the world’s largest and best preserved cliff dwellings. The ruins were first discovered in 1888 by local ranchers herding cattle.

Occupied for less than a century, by AD 1300 Mesa Verde's residents had moved into pueblos in the south. There are over 4000 known archaeological sites in the park, including 600 cliff dwellings, that were occupied between AD 550 and AD 1300. There are also mesa-top pit houses, kivas, temples, petroglyphs, pueblos and villages.

Vantage points along the 21 mile drive offer views of the many caves where Mesa Verde’s people built their homes. Auto tours can take you through 700 years of Mesa Verde history with only short walks from your car. The Mesa Top Loop Road is a 6-mile driving tour that features 12 easily accessible sites, including surface dwellings and cliff dwelling overlooks. The 6 mile Cliff Palace loop winds around mesa top sites and also features many easy access overlooks to cliff dwellings in the canyon below.

Mesa Verde’s 32 miles of roads are becoming more popular with cyclists, especially during the off-season. Watch for hairpin turns on the windy road in and out of the park. There is also a tunnel near the park entrance.

The best way to experience the past is a one hour guided tour to Cliff Palace or Balcony House. Tour tickets must be purchased in person in the park. Note that tours are in very high demand during the summer season. You must be in good physical shape, and not afraid of heights. The tours are strenuous. As an example, visiting Cliff Palace involves climbing 10 foot ladders five times during a 100 foot vertical climb. And although ancestral Puebloans climbed up to Balcony House using notches in the rock face, visitors today climb up 32-foot and 60-foot ladders.

One cliff dwelling is available on a self-guided basis most of the year (winter is free, ranger-guided only). Spruce Tree House is only a half mile round trip that should take about 15 minutes, but note that getting down and back requires a 100-foot climb. If you are looking for a flatter hike, try the 2.8 mile Petroglyph Point loop trail that leads to Anasazi rock art. Two short trails that provide excellent views of the cliff dwellings and other ruins are Soda Canyon Overlook and Balcony House Overlook.

The park celebrated its centennial in 2006 following a tough decade. Five fires burned in the park over seven years. Minimal damage was caused to some of the cliff dwellings, but the fires also revealed some new archaeological sites.

Don't miss the Chapin Mesa Archaeological Museum, which contains one of the finest collections of prehistoric artifacts in the world.