This is Mesa Verde from the northwest; the entrance from US160 is to the left of Point Lookout . The road then winds around Knife Edge in the middle and then up on the mesa proper to the right after passing under Prather Ridge. It is 20 miles from US160 to the museum. The National Park encompasses about 81 square miles including all the ancient cliff dwellings -- about 600, all nestled into "niches" created by the erosion of underlying rock leaving an overhanging "roof".

The literal translation of the name is "green table"; the area pictured above is drier and therefore less "green" but further west where the dwellings and park headquarters are located, there are a lot of trees. Except in the burn zone. The mesa is so large and high it influences the local weather.

There are many more fascinating (to me) details about this Park here.

So essentially we drove up and across this entire picture and even further to the southwest, going up from 6990' to over 8500' then back down to 7000' at the museum. I'll get back to the reason for this later.

All the major canyons run toward the south; these pictures don't show clearly but the "mesa" top slopes toward that direction until it eventually merges with the flatter land in the Ute Mountain Reservation. That means this is not a mesa, which would be level,  but a "cuesta", Spanish for "slope". Cuestas are very common in Colorado due to the Rocky Mountains rising and tilting the sedimentary rock layers into cuestas. In this particular case, the cuesta tilt was created by the San Juan Mountains rising to the north. The North Rim of Mesa Verde is the "escarpment" created by the Montezuma River.

Anyway, this is why we end up at almost the same altitude as the highway when we arrive at the museum and Spruce House.

The '96 fire burned over 4700 acres, the largest fire in Park history (The '34 fires burned over 4600 acres.) Due to the size of the park and the rugged terrain, fire mitigation is difficult.

And wildfire fighting is generally limited to protecting facilities and protecting the 5000 archaeological sites. These are protected with slurry bombing and by cutting fire lanes around critical areas. There still some reddish staining from the slurry dropped around Spruce House. While the dwellings are rock, wood beams support many of the structures, especially kivas, so there is a real possibility of a cliff dwelling burning.

Sleeping Ute Mountain marks the western end of the Ute Mountain Reservation and lies on the Colorado-Utah border. Traditionally, the Utes believe that when Sleeping Ute awakens, time will end and a new era of history will begin.

Spruce House is the third largest cliff dwelling in the Park. Most of the sites are small: 10 rooms or less. Even in the Spruce House niche, there were some small one room places in the low rent district. Like the one in the closeup of the doorway.