In his diary Escalante wrote:
“August 10. Father Fray Francisco Atanasio awoke troubled by a rheumatic fever which he had felt in his face and head since the day before, and it was desirable that we make camp here until he should be better, but the continuous rains, the inclemency of the weather, and the great dampness of the place forced us to leave it. Going north, and having traveled a little more than half a league, we turned to the northwest, went on a league and then swung west through valleys of very beautiful timber and abundant pasturage, roses, and various other flowers. After going two leagues we were again caught in a very heavy rain. Father Fray Francisco Atanasio became worse and the road impassable, and so, having traveled with great difficulty two more leagues to the west, we had to camp on the bank of the first of the two little rivers which form the San Lazaro, otherwise called Rio de los Mancos. The pasturage continues in great abundance. Today four and a half leagues.”
The small stream beside which Escalante camped that night is still called the Mancos. Only a few miles below his camping place it cuts directly into the Mesa Verde. The former inhabitants of the cliff dwellings had known it well. It had failed them during the great drouth. And now, on August 10, 1776, exactly 500 years after the beginning of that drouth which had caused them to leave the Mesa Verde, Escalante, a man of a new race, camped beside the Mancos, only a few miles from the empty ruins of the cliff dwellings.
Without doubt he saw the great mesa, the Mesa Verde, for it looms high above the Mancos Valley. But he turned away; he was seeking the sea to the west.
During the following three-quarters of a century many other Spaniards must have seen the Mesa Verde for there was much exploration in the region. Sometime during this period the mesa was given a Spanish name—Mesa Verde—the “green table.” The Spaniard who named it is unknown. Possibly he named it after climbing to its summit for from the valley below it is not so evident that the top is flat and eternally green. Could it be that he even saw the cliff dwellings and we have failed to find the record in the musty archives of Mexico or Spain? No, probably not. We must consider that the cliff dwellings were still unseen by modern man.
In 1848, the Mesa Verde, although still unknown, passed from Mexican to American ownership. Slowly the new owners drew nearer. The date of discovery of the now aged cliff dwellings was close at hand.
The first known mention of the Mesa Verde was made in the year 1859. In that year an exploring expedition set out from Santa Fe, under the leadership of Captain J. N. Macomb, to explore certain territory in what is now the State of Utah. Serving as geologist for this expedition was Professor J. S. Newberry and in his geological report he wrote:
“Between the Rio de la Plata and the Rio de los Mancos we skirted the base of the extreme southern point of the Sierra de la Plata. These mountains terminate southward in a long slope, which falls down to a level of about 7500 feet above the sea, forming a plateau which extends southward to the San Juan, the Mesa Verde, to which I shall soon have occasion again to refer.”
Farther on in his report he adds:
“To obtain a just conception of the enormous denudation which the Colorado Plateau has suffered, no better point of view could possibly be selected than that of the summit of the Mesa Verde. The geologist here has, it seems to me, satisfactory proof of the proposition I have before made....”