Mesa Verde National Park
Mesa Verde National Park protects some of the best-preserved Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites in the United States.
Established by Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, the park occupies 52,485 acres with more than 5,000 sites, including 600 cliff dwellings. It is the largest archaeological preserve in the United States. Mesa Verde is best known for structures such as Cliff Palace (which has 150 rooms and 23 kivas), and is thought to be the largest cliff dwelling in North America. Cliff Palace was in use for 70 years (1190 CE through 1260 CE) and was abandoned by 1300, probably due to a megadrought.
