More Mesa Verde Pictures
A continuation of my pictures from Mesa Verde National Park, taken last fall.
Some pictures of some of the structures in the cliff dwellings, including some interior shots. These were taken at The Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling ruin in North America.
Stone steps on the left and a wooden ladder on the right, used to get back up from The Cliff Palace to the top of the cliff. The steps were built by the WPA during the Depression, and the ladder is recent. The Ancient Puebloans used neither. Archaeologists found no evidence of ladders here, so they either had none, and just climbed without assistance up the bare cliff face, or they took the ladders with them when they abandoned the ruins. The latter (no pun intended) seems more likely. From items found in other ruins, they used rope ladders made of yucca plant matter and/or turkey feathers.
Some views of the cliff overhang where the ruins are from back atop the cliff. You can't see much of the ruins in the left pictures, so I climbed over a fence and out onto a dangerous rock outcropping to get the second shot. Yes, I know, I'm bad.
From atop the cliff at various points you can see other cliff dwellings carved into the canyon wall, some of them hundreds of feet above the ground yet hundreds of feet below the top of the cliff. It's hard to imagine how the occupants got in and out of them without a good number of injuries.
Just a couple of shots down the canyon itself.
Okay, enough for now. More later. Thanks for reading!
