We’d originally planned on staying for a week in Longmont, but extended our stay as I waited for a mail delivery.  So we’ve been able to enjoy both Longmont and its neighbor, Boulder. It’s been a low key, relaxing stay, which has been nice following an active few weeks.

About Boulder

Boulder (elevation 5,430 feet) was founded in 1858 during the Colorado Gold Rush. Located in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, it sits in what’s called the “Front Range.” The Front Range refers to the easternmost section of the Rocky Mountains where the Great Plains meet the mountains. As pioneers and travelers made their way across the Plains to the western frontier, the Front Range was their first encounter with the Rockies.

Today, the city has a population of about 106,000. Home of the main campus of the University of Colorado system; the campus has an enrollment of 38,000 students. Boulder is a tech and aerospace hub and is often referred to as the “Silicon Valley of the Rockies.”

Fun Fact: Starting in 2027, Boulder will be the new home of the Sundance Film  Festival. Founded by Robert Redford, the film festival was held in Park City, Utah for 40 years, but it’s outgrown its location.

Flagstaff Mountain

Flagstaff Mountain is an almost 7,000-foot peak just outside of Boulder. We took a drive on the twisty 4 1/2 mile Flagstaff Road that took us up to the Lost Gulch Overlook. At 7,333 feet, the overlook offers sweeping views of the mountains.

Boulder Creek

We stopped at Eben G. Fine Park in Boulder to eat lunch before heading to the Boulder Contemporary Art Museum. Named for pharmacist turned photographer, Fine (1865-1957) was nicknamed “Mr. Boulder”. He was one of the city’s most enthusiastic promoters. He traveled around the country lecturing, complete with photographs, on the beauty of the Rockies, especially the Boulder region.

There we discovered Boulder Creek, the 31-mile stream that flows through Boulder. The Park is a good place for tubing or kayaking on the creek. There are several spots with stone steps leading down to the creek. It was a 90° day so there were lots of folks enjoying the park and the creek.

The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art

The museum, in downtown Boulder, doesn’t collect art or have permanent exhibitions, but instead provides space for regional art exhibits. Most of the artists are Boulder-based or from Colorado at large.

The current exhibition is called “Tres Voces, Un Corazón / Three Voices, One Heart” showcasing the work of the Denver-based Ortega family – Tony Ortega, his wife Sylvia Montero, and their son, Cipriano Ortega. The works explore themes of identity and cultural memory.

Tony Ortega is a fine arts professor and visual artist, Sylvia Montero is a collage artist and Cipriano Ortega is a multimedia artist and musician.

The piece visually merges the Statue of Liberty and Our Lady of Guadalupe, hovering over a large group of peaceful protesters. Our Lady of Guadalupe is considered the patron saint of the Americas. It’s believed that in the mid 1500s she made several appearances to an Aztec peasant in Mexico carrying a message of unity, compassion and dignity.

Montero is a visual artist and a trained modern dancer. In her Gaan series, Montero prints on antique sheet music before layering the image of a Gaan (Apache) dancer in the foreground.

The Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse

The Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse was a gift from Boulder’s sister city of Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The partnership between the two cities was established in 1987 through Sister Cities International. The match was based on their commonalities – both are university towns surrounded by mountains and sit at the same latitude.

To celebrate the relationship, the people of Dushanbe planned on presenting a traditional Tajik tea house to the city of Boulder. A group of Tajik artisans spent several years building the handcrafted teahouse which was then shipped in pieces and reassembled along  Boulder Creek in downtown Boulder. It officially opened in 1998.

Celestial Seasonings, 4600 Sleepytime Drive, Boulder, CO

Celestial Seasonings was born in 1969 when 2 friends began handpicking wild herbs from the Rocky Mountains and selling them in hand-sewn muslin tea bags to local health food stores.  Coining the term “herbal tea”, the wild-harvested infusions became so popular that they eventually opened the current factory in Boulder in 1990. (The FDA didn’t have a category for drinks made without any Camellia sinensis – the traditional tea plant.) Today, Celestial Seasonings produces over 100 different varieties of herbal teas distributed to over 180 countries worldwide.

Celestial Seasonings offers tours of the factory where you get to see how the magic happens. They also have a tasting room where you can try out some of their newer teas. After tasting several of their teas, I was reminded that I’m not a fan of flowery or fruity teas. I’ll stick with black or green tea. (Although I do like their Bengal Spice tea.)

Fun facts

• Celestial Seasonings makes 3 different boxes for 3 different markets: the familiar packaging for the American market, a box in French and English for the Canadian market, and a box printed in 10 different languages for its global market.
• Outside of the U.S. and Canada, only tea containing Camellia sinensis, known as the tea plant, can be labeled tea. In other parts of the world Celestial Seasonings herbal teas must be labeled “infusions.”
• Introduced in 1972, Sleepytime Tea – a mixture of chamomile, spearmint, and lemongrass – quickly became the company’s most popular tea. It remains the bestselling specialty tea of all time.

We’re back in Colorado. We’ve been in the southwestern corner of the state (Mesa Verde NP) and now we’re in the north-central part of  Colorado, after spending some time in New Mexico in-between. We’re spending a week at a campground in Longmont, just outside of Boulder.

Colorado Fun Facts

• The discovery of gold in 1858-59 near present-day Denver sparked the Colorado Gold Rush.
• The search for gold drew about 100,000 prospectors – dubbed the “59ers” – to the region. The gold rush spurred the rapid development of the Colorado territory.
• The Colorado Gold Rush transformed the American West, shifting it from uncharted wilderness to permanent settlements that eventually became major cities.
• The Gold Rush was devastating to Native American tribes in the region. The influx of prospectors led to widespread environmental destruction, the violent breaking of treaties, and the forced expulsion of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands.
• Colorado became the 38th state in 1876.
• Colorado is the only U.S. state that lies entirely above 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) in elevation.
• Nearly 36% of Colorado’s 66.5 million acres is under federal jurisdiction.
• Over 40% of the state is in the Rocky Mountains.
• Ninety-six mountain peaks in the country exceed 14,000 feet in height called the “Fourteeners;” About 58 of them are in Colorado.
• Colorado is the only state to turn down the chance to host the Olympic Games (the 1976 Winter Games). In a statewide referendum, Colorado voters rejected publicly funding the Games.
• Colorado is the only state that borders three others at a single point. The meeting point of the four states – Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah – is marked by the Four Corners Monument.
• The Four Corners Monument is located entirely within the sovereign Navajo Nation and is managed by the Navajo Nation Parks & Recreation Department.

The Taos Pueblo

The dome shaped structures outside the houses are ‘hornos,’ traditional outdoor adobe ovens used for baking. The culturally significant structures have been used for centuries and are a central part of the living culinary traditions at the pueblo.

Traditional village homes have no running water or electricity. Light is provided by natural skylights, gas, or propane. The absence of modern amenities within the historic walls of Taos Pueblo is a deliberate choice by Pueblo members to preserve the cultural traditions, heritage, and the thousand-year-old architecture of the village.

Red Willow Creek (also known as the Rio Pueblo de Taos) is the lifeblood of the Taos Pueblo. It flows directly from the sacred Blue Lake in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It runs through the center of the Pueblo and is its main source of drinking water.

Blue Lake is a glacial lake high in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains located about 20 miles north of the main Pueblo village. The people of Taos Pueblo believe their ancestors originated from Blue Lake and continue to live there. It’s the tribe’s most sacred site and a place of annual pilgrimages.

In 1906, the U.S. government claimed 48,000 acres of mountain land in Northern New Mexico, including Blue Lake, placing it under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service as part of a national forest. For 64 years, Taos Pueblo leaders lobbied the federal government for the return of this sacred site – as a symbol of Native American religious freedom.

Finally, the bipartisan Taos-Blue Lake bill passed in Congress and was signed into affect by President Richard Nixon on December 15, 1970, restoring the entirety of the sacred mountain land to the Taos Pueblo people.

In speaking of the Bill’s significance, President Nixon stated: “This is a bill that represents justice, because in 1906 an injustice was done in which land involved in this bill, 48,000 acres, was taken from the Indians involved, the Taos Pueblo Indians. The Congress of the United States now returns that land to whom it belongs … I can’t think of anything more appropriate or any action that could make me more proud as President of the United States.”

The shrubs give the creek its name and is the namesake of the Pueblo’s people – People of the Red Willow.

The return of the Blue Lake area to the Taos Pueblo set a significant legal precedent for Native Americans and is a model for Indigenous groups worldwide. It marked the first time the U.S. government restored sacred, ancestral land to a tribe on the basis of religious freedom.

To read more about the Taos Pueblo from the Pueblo’s website:  https://taospueblo.com/about/

The Millicent Rogers Museum

The museum was established in 1956 as a memorial to Millicent Rogers, Gilded Age socialite and heiress to Standard Oil.  A strong champion of Southwestern Art and advocate for Native American civil rights, she was an avid art collector. The museum started with the multi-cultural art collection amassed by her and her mother. The 15 gallery museum is housed in a traditional hacienda donated by friends of Rogers.

Suazo was born in Taos Pueblo to an artistic family. His finely textured sculptures reflect his strong pueblo heritage, as well as his sensitivity to materials and the environment.

Arturo Chavez is a thirteenth-generation New Mexican, who grew up amid the spectacular vistas of Northern New Mexico, especially the landscapes of his grandmother’s home in the Nambé Pueblo.

Last look at Santa Fe from our campsite

On the road to Taos

About Taos

• Taos is located in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and sits at an elevation of 6,967 feet.
• The name Taos comes from the Tiwa word ‘tua-tah ‘ which translates to “place of red willows.” Red willow trees grow abundantly along the Rio Grande. 
• When Spanish explorers arrived in 1540 in what’s now New Mexico, they found thriving villages of multistory adobe houses inhabited by the peaceful Tiwa-speaking people who practiced irrigation agriculture.
• There were about 70 highly organized indigenous villages when the Spanish arrived. The Spanish called these settlements “pueblos” – Spanish for ‘villages.’
• The initial interactions between the Spanish and the Pueblo tribes were peaceful, but quickly deteriorated when the Spanish began to violently force conversion to Catholicism.
• By the 1600s, the Spanish crown began establishing colonies in Northern New Mexico. Taos was established as a Spanish village in 1615.
• One of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the country, Taos Pueblo was settled over 1,000 years ago.  The people of Taos Pueblo are the modern descendants of the Ancestral Puebloans – the  cliff dwellers.
• The Taos Pueblo is a historic Native American community located just north of the town of Taos. Referred to as “the village,” the Taos Pueblo is part of a larger tribal land area that encompasses 95,000 acres. Calling themselves the “Red Willow People” the community has a population of about 4,500 people, with about 150 people living in the historic village full-time.
• Taos Pueblo was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992 in recognition of its cultural and historical significance.
• Taos was officially incorporated as a town in 1934.
• Taos, New Mexico, has a population of approximately 6,000 residents.

We took a walk in the the Railyard

Beginning in 1880, the Santa Fe Railyard was the central hub for rail transportation in Santa Fe. The site was the key interchange point between three railroads, connecting the region to national railroad lines and shaping the city’s economic and physical layout.

With the rise of automobiles and the decline in train travel, the Railyard fell into disuse and disrepair by the 1980s. In 1995, the city of Santa Fe bought the 50-acre property to protect it from demolition. After years of community planning, the revitalized Santa Fe Railyard officially reopened as a multi-use cultural space in 2008.

The Railyard has a park and walking trails, a playground, art galleries, restaurants and breweries and the city’s farmers market.

The Spiegelbergs arrived in Santa Fe in 1846 and became political, cultural, and community leaders. They played an important part in the development of the Railyard, helping to attract the Santa Fe Central Railway to the city. These German Jewish pioneers and their wives played a central role in Santa Fe society, and their contributions helped usher Santa Fe from frontier times into the modern age.

We visited the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture
The museum focuses on the stories, practices, and artistic legacy of the Indigenous peoples of the Southwest.

The Shared Knowledge sculpture depicts an elder passing down tribal lore, legends, and cultural practices to the younger generation. It honors the Native American oral tradition and the intergenerational transfer of wisdom.

We spent some time at the Museum of International Folk Art
The museum houses the largest collection of global folk art in the world, totaling over 135,000 artifacts from more than 100 countries.

The museum has four main wings. We started in the Girard Wing with its exhibition – Multiple Visions: A Common Bond, which opened in 1982. Named for architect and designer Alexander Girard who donated his collection of miniatures, textiles, and toys from more than 100 countries. He designed the exhibition himself, creating scenes that immerse you in his imagined worlds.

In Estremoz, east of Lisbon, decorative ceramic wares have been produced for centuries. Girard grouped these 1930s colorful clay figures into intricate, playful tableaus that include musicians, a uniformed cavalry, and miniature pilgrims climbing a staircase.

The Girard exhibition was jam-packed with so many folk toys and curated, intricate scenes that we didn’t have the energy to visit the other wings.

We ate lots of good Mexican food

Santa Fe has lots of good Mexican restaurants. We tried several – La Choza, the Pecos Trail Café, and Tomasito’s at the Railyard. All of them were very good. We were introduced to some new dishes like Green Chili Stew (which I plan to try making at home) Sopapillas, a leavened dough that is fried and served with honey, and Flautas, a tightly rolled taco.

We attended Friday night services at Congregation Beit Tikva

It was a very welcoming community with an active and engaged congregation. They even sang my favorite version of Shalom Aleichem, which I don’t hear much anymore.

Tomorrow we move on to Taos.

One of the best places in Santa Fe to watch the sunset is at the Old Fort Marcy Park. In 1846, three months into the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), the U.S. Army built a fort to defend the newly occupied Mexican city of Santa Fe. They chose a hilltop just 600 yards from the historic plaza with a 360° view of the city. The adobe fort was never occupied and saw no combat; it was officially abandoned in 1868.

All that’s left of the fort are earth mounds that outline the borders of the fort. Today it’s a scenic overlook with views of Santa Fe’s 2 mountain ranges – the Sangre de Cristo and Jemez Mountains. The low humidity, high altitude (7,000 feet high) and clean air create a canvas for the pinks, purples, and oranges of the city’s sunrises and sunsets.

The low humidity, high elevation (7,200 feet high) and clean air means light travels through less air, supplying a canvas for the pinks, purples, and oranges of the city’s sunrises and sunsets.

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) is considered the “Mother of American Modern Art.” The museum is the largest dedicated to a single female artist. She rejected traditional representational painting styles to forge her own visual language focusing on nature, light, and organic forms. In 2014, one of her paintings sold for over $44 million, the most ever paid for a female artist’s work. She is one of the most successful and revered artists of the 20th century.

“I hate flowers—I paint them because they’re cheaper than models, and they don’t move.”

In 1916, O’Keeffe began experimenting with abstraction while teaching in Virginia and Texas, painting her radical new “shapes and ideas.”  “Anything” marks her transition to vibrant color and oils. She caught the attention of legendary photographer and NYC gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz, whom she would later marry.

“…you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower – and I don’t.”

Her abstract botanicals drew attention and speculation. Many male critics saw the curving forms as female reproductive organs and an expression of O’Keeffe’s sexuality. She adamantly refused sexualized interpretations of her work.

“When people read erotic symbols into my paintings, they’re really talking about their own affairs.”

“Petunia, No. 2” is a classic example of O’Keeffe’s style of magnifying natural forms, informed by modernist approaches to photography, like extreme cropping and obscuring the background.

O’Keefe explained that she turned to flowers as subjects and painted them “big” to capture the attention of “busy New Yorkers.” She frequently emphasized the importance of slowing down to process one’s surroundings.

“I’ll paint what I see—what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it.”

“When I entered the art world, the men weren’t very happy about it. You weren’t supposed to paint yellow pictures, and you weren’t supposed to paint pink pictures.”

In 1929, she traveled to Taos, NM at the invitation of an arts patron. There she found a vast rugged landscape, clear light, and the rich blend of Indigenous and Hispanic cultures. It was also an escape from the male-dominated art world of NYC.

Looking to escape ongoing conflict with her husband about a large mural she hoped to paint in NYC, O’Keefe traveled to rural Quebec and the Gaspé Peninsula, her first trip to Canada. At 7-feet- tall, the painting  was her largest work at the time. The painting was inspired by the French-Canadian wayside crosses she encountered in Quebec.

In 1940, O’Keeffe bought her first home in New Mexico. In the 30s and 40s, she created many paintings of the New Mexico landscape she was deeply connected to. This painting represents what she described as the “desert-lovely-flowers” she found along the hillsides and is distinct from her earlier work. She doesn’t manipulate or enlarge the shape, but presents them in a dense formation. It underscores her true artistic intention: the art of seeing.

In 1964 at the age of 77, O’Keeffe was diagnosed with macular degeneration, which slowly destroyed her central vision. She continued to make art relying on muscle memory, instinct, touch, and what she saw in her peripheral vision. She shifted from oils back to watercolors and graphite. She experimented with clay and pottery. She also began using studio assistants. She completed her last unassisted oil painting in 1972.

“I can see what I want to paint. The thing that makes you want to create is still there.”
— Spoken in 1977, at the age of ninety.

Georgia O’Keeffe died of natural causes at the age of 98 on March 6,1986 at a Santa Fe hospital. Her work is celebrated internationally. She remains an icon of Southwestern art and female independence.

Tewa Nangeh/Tewa Country Exhibition

The phrase “O’Keeffe Country” was a widely used tourism slogan for Northern New Mexico through the early 2000s. Local tourism organizations and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum no longer use the slogan due to its erasure of Indigenous communities who inhabited the land long before O’Keeffe arrived.

O’Keeffe’s is only one story and only one person’s relationship to the Northern New Mexico landscape. The land she loved is the ancestral home of the Tewa (TAY-wah) people, whose descendants still live there.

The museum is actively partnering with Pueblo and Indigenous groups to challenge the erasure of local Native history. A new exhibition at the museum challenges the historical erasure of Indigenous presence in the narrative of O’Keeffe’s life in Northern New Mexico.

From the introduction to the exhibit…

“The Tewa people have existed in this land since time immemorial; they still live on their ancestral homelands and act as stewards. Georgia O’Keeffe famously declared, “When I got to New Mexico, that was mine. As soon as I saw it, that was my country. I’d never seen anything like it before, but it fitted to me exactly.” New Mexico is a profoundly beautiful and exceptional place. This exhibition reminds us that Georgia O’Keeffe’s story is not the only story of this place, nor does it belong to any single individual.”

There are 8 federally recognized pueblos in northern New Mexico, which are collectively known as the “Eight Northern Indian Pueblos”.

Read about the Tewa Nangeh/Tewa Country Exhibition: https://hluce.org/this-is-not-just-okeeffe-country/

We’re spending a week in the Santa Fe area. It’s a city I’ve been interested in visiting even before we got the RV. I’ve always heard good things about it as an artsy place with good energy. I’ll finally get to experience it myself.

Santa Fe was founded in the early 1600s as the capital of Nuevo Mexico, one of the provinces of Spain’s empire in the New World. Long before the Spanish conquistadors arrived, the area was settled by Tewa-speaking Ancestral Puebloans. They built a settlement on the banks of the Oga Po’geh – the White Shell Water Place – today called the Santa Fe River.  The settlement, also named Oga Po’geh, sat where downtown Santa Fe and its historic plaza are today.

When the Spanish arrived in the Santa Fe area, they didn’t find the gold they were seeking, but they did find the remnants of a town with structures built of adobe brick where irrigation and agriculture had been practiced. The Indigenous residents of the town had moved on 200 years earlier, but dozens of Pueblo communities continued to thrive nearby along the Rio Grande with a well-established trade network.

So the Spanish established the province’s capital on the cultivated, irrigated land that sat in the foothills of the surrounding Sangre de Cristo Mountains and named the settlement La Villa Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís – The Royal Town of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi. St. Francis was the patron saint of the Franciscan Friars who played a major role in the exploration and settling of New Spain.

Fast forward through the Spanish Colonial era, a Pueblo Revolt, the reconquest by Spain, the Mexican War of Independence, the Mexican-American War to 1912 when New Mexico gained U.S. statehood. Through all that history, Santa Fe has maintained its status as a capital city making it the oldest capital city in North America.

Santa Fe Fun Facts

• At an elevation of 7,199 feet, Santa Fe is the highest state capital in the country.
• Santa Fe is the second-oldest continuously inhabited European-founded city in the country; St. Augustine, Florida is the oldest.
• Santa Fe isn’t actually in the desert; it’s classified as a semiarid steppe – a grassland that receives enough precipitation (between 10 to 20 inches annually) to support short grasses and shrubs, but not enough to support forests.
• The city enjoys 310 days of sunlight yearly.
• Santa Fe has some of the cleanest air in the United States due to its lack of local heavy industry, strict state emission standards, and high altitude.
• Santa Fe is the third-largest art market in the U.S., following only New York City and Los Angeles.
• In 2005, Santa Fe was designated the first UNESCO Creative City in the country.
• Built around 1610, San Miguel Chapel in Santa Fe is the oldest church building in the continental U.S.

The Canyons of the Ancients National Monument and Museum started life as the Anasazi Heritage Center in 1988. The center was created to preserve the artifacts excavated during the construction of the McPhee Reservoir. The reservoir was planned as part of a bigger project to ensure water security in arid southwestern Colorado.

The McPhee Reservoir flooded approximately 4,500 acres of land; much of that land contained identified archaeological sites. Under federal law, a plan for preserving the cultural and natural resources impacted by a civil works project must be developed. The Dolores Archaeological Program (DAP) of 1978-1985 was that plan. (The Dolores River is the nearby tributary of the Colorado River that was dammed to create the reservoir.)

DAP archaeologists documented more than 1,600 sites scheduled to be flooded; about 1.5 million artifacts were collected. The DAP was the largest public “salvage archaeology” project in U.S. history.

The Heritage Center was officially designated a national monument in 2018 and renamed the Canyons of the Ancients Monument and Museum. It operates as an “outdoor museum” and protects the highest known density of archaeological sites in the U.S. The new name is respectful of modern Pueblo tribes who trace their ancestry to the early inhabitants of the region.

The Dominguez Pueblo shows the outlines of 3 rooms and an earth-walled kiva – the circular underground room used for spiritual ceremonies. Built about 1123 C.E., it was a typical 4-5 person family home. After excavation of the site, the kiva was filled with soil to protect it from erosion.

The Escalante Pueblo Trail

After the museum closed we took the .5 mile paved, uphill walk to the partially excavated Ancestral Puebloan village dating to the 1100s.

The Great Sage Plain is the over 1,500 square-mile-region of elevated desert  that stretches across southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah. An elevated or high desert is an arid or semi-arid environment that sits at higher altitudes. The Great Sage Plain sits at elevations between 4,000 – 7,000 feet high. The rolling, sagebrush-covered hills are the heart of tens of thousands of Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites, including Mesa Verde National Park.

Is it the great Ute warrior god in a deep sleep waiting to rise again to help his people fight their enemies? Or is it a 60 million year-old laccolithic intrusion? Maybe it’s both.

The Escalante and Dominguez Pueblos are named in honor of the two Spanish Franciscan friars, Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, who set out on an expedition from Santa Fe in 1776 to find a route to the California missions. They provided detailed information on the “strange ruins of stone cities and villages” they encountered along the way.

The San Juan Skyway is a 236-mile Scenic Drive, a loop that winds its way through the rugged San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado. The road reaches an elevation of 11,018 feet at Red Mountain Pass. It connects the historic mining and mountain towns of Durango, Silverton, Ouray, and Telluride.

The 25-mile stretch between Ouray and Silverton is called the Million Dollar Highway; it’s a twisty, narrow road with cliff-hanging switchbacks, steep drop-offs and no guardrails. One section of the Highway has a posted speed limit of 15 mph. We decided to leave the RV at the Mancos campground and drive the entire route, stopping in Ouray overnight.

Colorado has 26 designated scenic byways, more than any other state.

The history of the Red Mountain Mining District is one of many stories of the boom-and-bust mining areas throughout the West. As ore deposits were discovered, a wave of miners, cooks, saloon keepers, boarding house operators, stable owners and families arrived seeking their fortunes. Six towns were established in the eight-square-mile area and the population swelled to 3,000 people. None of those towns exist today.

The robbery of the San Miguel Valley Bank in Telluride in 1889 was the first bank robbery for Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch. They got away with $20,750 – more than a half-million dollars in today’s money. Between 1889 and 1901, they pulled off some of the largest train and bank heists in Wild West history. Makes me want to rewatch “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

We’re staying in a campground in Mancos, Colorado, just a mile outside of Mesa Verde National Park. Mesa Verde is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The park contains over 5,000 documented archaeological sites, including 600 cliff dwellings of the Ancestral Pueblo People.

The region was named Mesa Verde, green table in Spanish, by Spanish explorers when they saw the massive, flat-topped sandstone plateaus covered in piñon and juniper forests. The sight reminded them of giant green tables rising from the canyon floor.

Who were the Ancestral Pueblo People

About 1,500 years ago (about 500 C.E.) a group of Indigenous people arrived in the region that is today Mesa Verde. Historically, archaeologists referred to them as the Anasazi, what they believed was the Navajo word for “ancient ones.” But it was a mistranslation and actually means “enemy ancestors.” Modern Pueblo peoples find the term offensive as it disrespects their ancestors. In the late 20th century, archaeologists and cultural institutions began switching to the preferred term.

The introduction of corn, beans and squash through trade networks enabled the shift from a nomadic culture focused on hunting to a settled agricultural society. For more than 750 years, the Ancestral Pueblo People and their descendants flourished on the mesas and deep canyons of southwestern Colorado.

They began building permanent dwellings, starting with mostly underground pit houses, expanding to multiple room structures and then building elaborate, multi-story stone communities in the sheltered alcoves of the canyon walls.

The Ancestral Puebloans developed advanced skills in stone masonry, water management, farming in arid conditions, weaving, basket making and pottery. They found creative ways of trapping water and used pumice gravel as mulch to slow evaporation. Farming became so productive that it made up about 90% of their diet. All these skills were developed without advanced tools or pack animals to help with the heavy lifting. It’s truly remarkable to consider.

By 1300 C.E. the cliff dwellings were abandoned. It was long believed that the communities just disappeared. The exact reasons are unknown. Archaeologists and historians speculate that drought and conflict with nomadic tribes might have prompted their departure. Many of their Native descendants believe they traveled south to settle among kin already living there.

To learn more:
https://www.britannica.com/video/Cliff-dwellings-Pueblo-III-area-American-Southwest/-182519
https://youtu.be/ifY8gBIonAc?si=qwF4ATN3_JKxtveX

In 1888, the dwelling was discovered by local ranchers who used a large spruce tree to climb down from the mesa top; thus the name Spruce Tree House. Word spread quickly of the find and archaeologists and commercial “pot hunters” descended on the site looting artifacts and causing damage. Survey teams and other expeditions followed and other sites were discovered.

Alarmed by the destruction, conservationists lobbied the federal government to protect the historically valuable artificats. In 1906, Mesa Verde National Park was established to protect the cultural resources for future generations. It is the only national park created specifically to preserve human history and culture. The park was the inspiration for the Antiquities Act of 1906 that protects prehistoric ruins and artifacts.

Local Native American tribes always knew about the cliff dwellings, especially the modern Pueblo tribes who are descendants of the Ancestral Pueblo People. Stories about the cliff dwellers, including exact locations, were passed down through their rich oral tradition. The dwellings remain a sacred place for multiple Indigenous nations and a pilgrimage site for visiting their ancestors.

Chapin Mesa Archaeological Museum

Housed in an historic building (built between 1922 – 1925) the museum is one of the oldest in the National Park System. It has extensive displays of Ancestral Puebloan artifacts, tools, baskets and pottery and lots of information on what’s known about the cliff dwellers. In the 20- minute film, “Footprints of Our Ancestors,” we hear from some of the descendants of the Ancestral Puebloans and the park’s significance to them. Mesa Verde is sacred land for 27 Pueblos and tribes.

Park Point Overlook

A short, but steep trail led up to the highest point in the park at an elevation of 8,572 feet. It offers a panoramic view of the Four Corners region. At the top of the point sits the fire lookout tower.

Constructed in 1939 by the Civilian Conservation Corps, the lookout tower sits at the highest point in the park. It is still an essential part of the park’s fire management, staffed 7 days a week June – September.

Eighty percent of fires in the park are caused by lightning strike. Rangers in the tower track weather systems, spot early plumes of smoke and log lightning strikes. During the summer the park can receive up to 100 strikes in a 24 hour period. Nearly 75% of the park has burned since it was established in 1906. Modern firefighting can do irreparable damage to archaeological sites. Archaeologists with fire fighting skills work alongside firefighters to identify and minimize the damage.

Cliff dwellings

Three of the cliff dwellings can be viewed up close on a ranger led tour – but the tours are only for the able-bodied. They all require climbing ladders, steep climbs and narrow passageways. Michael’s booked a tour of the largest cliff dwelling in North America – Cliff Palace – for later this week. I’m looking forward to hearing all about it.

On our last day in Utah we took a drive along the Colorado. The Colorado River forms the southern boundary of Arches National Park. Following along the river is Utah State Route 128 originally built to connect the rural communities of eastern Utah. The highway is designated the Upper Colorado River Scenic Byway. Locals refer to it as “the river road.”

Lions Park and the Colorado

The scenic drive starts off with a riverside park named in honor of the Moab Lions Club for its contributions to making the park happen. The park has a pedestrian bridge that crosses the Colorado River.

Michael took the first four pictures.

Heading out of Moab

The Colorado River

Next stop: Mesa Verde National Park in southern Colorado. Goodbye Utah.