Mesa Verde National Park in US

Mesa Verde National Park at Colorado , US

Mesa Verde National Park is a UNESCO Heritage Site and a US National Park. What makes this special? Spread over more than 52,000 acres in the Montezuma County in southern Colorado in the US, the park preserves the cliff dwellings of the ancestral Puebloan people known as the Anasazi.

Mesa Verde in Spanish translates into “green table”. The cliff dwellings constitute some of the best preserved archeological sites in the country. The Anasazi lived in the Mesa Verde region between 450 CE and 1300 CE. Over 600 of these dwellings are recorded in the national park including the famous Balcony House, Square Tower House, and Cliff House. In all the national park protects over 5,000 archeological sites and others are continually being discovered. The south-west Colorado plateau on which the Mesa Verde National Park is located is at an altitude of about 8,500 feet and over 572,000 visitors head to the national park each year.

The Mesa Verde villages were initially discovered in 1874. The rock-cut dwellings were soon pillaged by collectors and treasure hunters. By 1889, much of the artifacts in the region were sold – in 1889 collectors held a large pottery sale. At about this time, archeologists started to study and excavate the remains. By 1906, the site come under the protection of the Federal Antiquities Act and has been well-preserved ever since.