Mesa Verde National Park (7,500′), Chapin Mesa

Mesa Verde National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The park protects some of the best-preserved Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites in the United States. With more than 5,000 sites, including 600 cliff dwellings, it is the largest archaeological preserve in the United States.

The Mesa Verdeans survived using a combination of hunting, gathering, and subsistence farming of crops such as corn, beans, and squash. They built the mesa’s first pueblos sometime after 650, and by the end of the 12th century, they began to construct the massive cliff dwellings for which the park is best known. By 1285, following a period of social and environmental instability driven by a series of severe and prolonged droughts, they abandoned the area and moved south to locations in Arizona and New Mexico.