Mesa Verde National Park
Sunday, September 29, 2024
Jesse Nusbaum with little friend. NPS photo.
Today’s experience visiting Mesa Verde couldn’t be more different from 1000 years ago if we were dropped down from space. We move on asphalt networks in metal capsules of varying sizes, hopping in and out of them (over twelve times by my count) at carefully positioned locations to view ruins covered by monstrously unattractive metal buildings. Funny thing is, I don’t mind. It is a very special place in spite of this strange and temporary connection.
The mesa changes from verde to oro this time of year as oaks and serviceberry turn. I imagined thinner crowds and cooler weather but the parking lot at the big Visitor and Research Center was already busy at 9:45AM and it was warm on the mesa by noon.
TACA Board Member Jerry Widdison remembers visiting the park with his family after the war. They stayed at the Aneth Motel in Cortez. It’s still there. Aneth is a word in many languages but Jerry said it’s Navajo and also a Utah place name. The origin may be a nickname given to a greedy Anglo trader meaning just like a devil. The term was used more widely about unsavory business practices at trading posts.
The Drive
At the entrance kiosk up the road I bought an Annual Senior Pass which is a very good deal. The man staffing the kiosk was a quintessential park ranger in full uniform, full beard, dark sunglasses and Smokey Bear hat. I resisted asking, “All set for Halloween, are ya?”
It is a great road up and across the big mesa and its smaller mesas, that reach like fingers between multiple canyons. There are stunning views from several overlooks. Jerry recalled the hair raising part of the route called “The Knife Edge” that’s now a trail. A tunnel replaced this section of the road.
Far View Ruins site was my first intended stop but, like all of Wetherill Mesa, it was closed. With no choice, like everyone else that day, I went on southward on Chapin Mesa to the museum and two loop roads.
It’s clear from old maps and aerial photos that ruins are all over Chapin Mesa but you can’t see the archaeology from the roads and you’re not allowed off them. This is by design. It protects the sites and landscape from being over-run by humans, no doubt. It also means you can be well over two hours into the park before ever seeing a ruin.
Jerry also recalled that the tours of the famous cliff dwellings were first-come-first-served and that you could walk into many of them unaccompanied by a guide. Those days are gone.
Park History
The people behind designation of Mesa Verde as a National Park in 1906 included women. Virginia McClurg (1857-1931) started a movement to preserve the cultural treasures of the mesa. Lucy Peabody, (1863-1934) the “Mother of Mesa Verde” worked nine years to gain national support for park creation, including negotiation with the Weminuche Utes.
Wetherill and Chapin Mesas are named after Richard Wetherill and Frederick H. Chapin. Along with Wetherill’s family, including Marietta Palmer Wetherill, they explored the ruins during the summers of 1889 and 1890. Chapin wrote the first book about the place in 1892, “The Land of the Cliff Dwellers.”
Wetherill was from a Quaker ranching family that settled in the Mancos River valley in 1880. He ran trading posts, including one in Chaco Canyon where he was murdered in 1910. Artifacts he and his family collected were subsequently donated by Marietta Wetherill to the University of New Mexico.
Perhaps the people with the mostly visible modern impact on the park were Jesse Nusbaum and his wife Eileen. Jesse Nusbaum was selected as park superintendent in 1921 and began significant improvements in 1922.
Parkitecture
Before arriving at the museum I turned off on a whim to check out the picnic area. It was delightful. No other people were there. Old thick junipers shade the picnic tables. This was once the campground and the spaces and little roads are scaled for Model Ts. I found a choice spot in front of a serviceberry bush in full yellow fall color and saw a turkey, crows, and a hawk.
It was here in the old campground that first noticed a little sandstone brick building that looked a bit like an ancient pueblo structure. It was a restroom.
The reinterpretation of ancient architecture for modern purposes at Mesa Verde in the early twenties created a cluster of unique historic buildings on Chapin Mesa - a layer of history upon prehistory.
Jesse Nusbaum (1887-1975) was born in Greeley, Colorado and became an archaeologist when the science was new. He studied teaching and then taught in Las Vegas, New Mexico before becoming an archaeologist and architect, undertaking work on new and ancient buildings, including the Palace of the Governors and the State Art Museum in Santa Fe.
I left the picnic area and headed into that cluster of historic buildings - hidden in and among large junipers and punctuated by expanses of asphalt roads and parking. The museum was one of six buildings funded by JD Rockefeller Jr. and built by the newly appointed superintendent between 1922-1925, with an addition in 1939. It’s design subtly mimics a scaled down Spanish mission with a small interior courtyard (barely visible through the windows) and a “church” or auditorium where a film about the park was showing.
Ruins at Last
In spite of its position as the focal point atop the trail that descends into Spruce Canyon and Spruce Tree House - my first view of a ruin - the museum is underwhelming and crowded. The building was apparently tortured into ADA compliance and ramps consume entire rooms. It’s obvious a lot more money and effort have gone into displays at the visitor center at the entrance in recent years than at the old museum on Chapin Mesa.
There’ve been many fires but many beautiful trees remain. During the height of occupation in the thirteenth century, the plateau was largely deforested. According to dendrochronologists cited in the extensive wiki page about Mesa Verde, the last tree used in construction was cut in 1281. This marked the tail end of mesa occupation.
The loop roads have many overlooks from which to view canyon ruins. Jerry said he visited an overlook exactly 100 years after Wetherill rode a horse up to that same spot and saw Cliff Palace for the first time. It’s still awe inspiring.
I’m planning on visiting Mesa Verde again before my annual pass expires. I’ll never grow tired of trying to envision life on this mesa, even in the more recent past when visitors in early cars or wagons climbed the mesa over difficult roads to visit mysterious stone structures for the first time. Plenty of mysteries remain on Mesa Verde.