GLIMPSES OF THE MESA VERDE STORY
The Mesa Verde story has all the elements of the most thrilling “Western:”
Scene 1. Father Escalante and his cavalcade of Spanish explorers camped at the northeast edge of the Mesa on August 11, 1776—without even suspecting that its deep canyons hid ancient stone cities.
Scene 2. Antonio Armijo, with his caballeros at nearby Mancos Creek, on November 19, 1824, searching for a route from Santa Fe to California.
Scene 3. Secret inroads of the Mountain Men—beaver trappers who may have poached in this remote section of the southern Rockies in the 1830’s and 1840’s.
Scene 4. The hectic rush of the gold and silver prospectors of the 50’s and 60’s into the nearby La Plata Diggings.
Scene 5. Arrival of the pioneer photographer, William Henry Jackson, at the mines; his search for vaguely reported ruins—and his discovery and first photograph of a Mesa Verde cliff dwelling, Two Story House, on September 9, 1874.
Scene 6. The government survey party led by H. H. Holmes, surveying the new West, the next year, and finding a large cliff dwelling which he called Sixteen-Window House.
Scene 7. Pioneer ranchers settling in the Mancos Valley in the 1870’s and 1880’s, especially the Wetherills who made friends with the Utes, and were permitted to run their cattle on the forbidden Mesa Verde.
Scene 8. In 1885, the coming of the first, and possibly the most willful, young lady tourist, Virginia Donahoe, who was given protection by the officers of the Indian fighting cavalry and advised to “go home”; but, instead, stayed at the Wetherill ranch and went hunting arrowheads and prehistoric pottery with the five Wetherill boys—and returned the next summer to equip her own expedition that penetrated Cliff Canyon and “discovered Balcony House Ruin on October 6, 1886.”
Scene 9. The friendly old Ute chief, Acowitz, enjoying the Wetherills’ hospitality and telling them of “Big Cities” in Mesa Verde’s canyons.
Scene 10. Richard Wetherill and his cousin, Charley Mason, searching for lost cattle on the Mesa—and their dramatic “discovery” of Cliff Palace and Spruce Tree Ruins on December 18, 1888—and Square Tower Ruin the following day.
Scene 11. The local cowboys “treasure hunting” in cliff dwellings during the next few years—permissible digging for relics which were beautiful curiosities and sometimes saleable.
Scene 12. Systematic field investigations by Dr. F. H. Chapin, W. R. Birdsall and Baron Gustaf Nordenskiold, whose scientific reports of 1890-93 resulted in the dawning recognition of the scientific importance of these ruins and buried artifacts.
Scene 13. The women of Colorado rallying to the standard of their Cliff Dwellings Association, through the 1890’s and early 1900’s, for the establishment of a national park.
Scene 14. Many congressional postponements and final action establishing Mesa Verde National Park on June 29, 1906.
Scene 15. Subsequent palaver and a treaty with the Utes to rectify the boundaries and to get the big ruins into the Park—and controversy with these recalcitrant neighbors that persists to this day.
Scene 16. Dr. J. Walter Fewkes of the Smithsonian Institution and a digging crew repairing Spruce Tree Ruin and stabilizing its walls in 1908, and Cliff Palace during the following year, and most of the other big ruins during the next thirteen years—stabilization and research that continues today under the National Park Service, assisted by the National Geographic Society.
Scene 17. George Mills surveying the “carriage road” to the Mesa top which was painfully pioneered from 1907 to 1914.
Scene 18. Announcement: “On May 23, 1921, Mr. Jesse Nusbaum of Colorado, a young archaeologist of great experience and reputation for successful work in the Southwest, was appointed” as Superintendent of Mesa Verde National Park.
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The new Superintendent’s wide and practical experience enabled him to lead the way in coordinating and directing many important activities: overall plans for the general functional layout; architectural plans; road construction; establishment of public campgrounds; development of water supply and other facilities needed by the vastly increased number of visitors who were beginning to discover this fascinating, unique, and hitherto almost unknown National Park.
Outstanding among the permanent achievements of this constructive decade were the development of the Ranger Guide Service made up for the most part of trained young archaeologists, under the direction of a permanent naturalist-archaeologist; the building and equipment of a museum from funds contributed by public subscription; the establishment of evening campfire lectures, and demonstrations by the Navajos of their tribal chants and dances—activities that today form the pattern of the inspiring interpretive program conducted here by the National Park Service.