Photo: Tobi 87 · CC BY-SA 4.0
Mesa Verde guide: Cliff Palace and Balcony House tours, the Ancestral Puebloans, ticket booking, the Mesa Top Loop and tips for Colorado’s cliff dwellings.
In southwestern Colorado, the Ancestral Puebloans lived on and around this green mesa for more than 700 years, from about 550 to 1300 CE. In their final century here, they built remarkable villages of stone, wood and mud tucked into alcoves in the canyon walls. About 600 cliff dwellings survive, among some 5,000 known archaeological sites.
Cliff Palace, with around 150 rooms and 23 kivas, is the largest cliff dwelling in North America. You can visit it only on a ranger-guided tour, which involves ladders and steps. Balcony House is the adventurous one: a 10-meter ladder, a narrow tunnel and a ledge with a view over the canyon.
If you skip the tours, the Mesa Top Loop Road has overlooks of many dwellings and pit houses. In 1906 Mesa Verde became the first national park created to protect the works of people rather than natural scenery.
Don’t miss
- 1A ranger-guided tour of Cliff Palace
- 2The ladders and tunnel of Balcony House
- 3Overlooks on the Mesa Top Loop Road
- 4The Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum
Insider tips
- Book tour tickets on Recreation.gov; they go on sale a few days in advance.
- The drive from the entrance to Cliff Palace takes about an hour.
- The mesa is above 2,100 m (7,000 ft); drink plenty of water.
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