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.