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Mesa Verde National Park and Mining Train
Mesa Verde National Park is located in Southwestern Colorado, a few miles southeast of Cortez. This site was the home of the ancient Anasazi Indian tribe and is thought to have flourished for only a couple of hundred years, approximately 1100 to 1300 A.D. The communal cliff dwellings were strategically placed in a large cavity in the side of a cliff in an isolated canyon to take advantage of the passive warming rays of the winter sun.
The cliff dwellings were first discovered by a cowboy who turned up a remote canyon looking for stray cattle. Native American artifacts such as pottery and baskets were intact and placed as though waiting for the occupants to return from a day's hunting. No Indian legends were handed down to explain the abrupt exodus of the people. Many theories have been offered in attempts to explain the abrupt cessation of the community and the abandonment of the cliff dwellings.
It is thought that there may have been an epidemic, that all of the game in the area was gone, or that there may have been an extended period of drought which forced the relocation of the people because they were unable to grow crops.
An old electric Mining Train is displayed nearby
