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.”