Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, September 14, 2009
This was our third visit to Mesa Verde National Park, situated in the southwest part of Colorado.
Mesa Verde National Park offers an unparalleled opportunity to see and experience a unique cultural and physical landscape. The park contains more than 4,000 known archeological sites including cliff dwellings, which are elaborate stone villages that the Ancestral Puebloans constructed in the sheltered alcoves of the canyon walls and lived in from approximately A.D. 550 through A.D. 1300. These archeological sites are some of the most notable and best preserved in the United States.
The park also offers visitors 8,500 acres of federally designated wilderness that support a great diversity of wildlife including 74 species of mammals, 200 species of birds, 16 species of reptiles, five species of amphibians, six species of fishes and over 1,000 species of insects and other invertebrates. (National Park Foundation)
