Mesa Verde National Park
Stepping Back In Time With Indigenous Peoples
Mesa Verde is not only an international dark sky park but it’s also a world heritage site. At 52,000 acres, it is a 20+ mile drive through the mountains to get from one end of the park to the other.
You can explore this park via your own self-guided car tour, podcasts, audio tours as well as ticketed tours through the NPS.
The draw of Mesa Verde is the amazing cliff dwellings. It is estimated that there are 4700 archaeological sites as well as 600 cliff dwellings throughout Mesa Verde national Park with possibly more undiscovered. The ancestral peoples built massive structures, some containing hundreds of rooms. If you want to get up close and personal and go inside some of the cliff dwellings, you will need to schedule a ticketed tour with the NPS. You can, however, see a lot of the structures from the paved road and short trails as well as overlooks and vistas along the way.