Mesaverde Group – Michael Stephen Wills Photography

Balcony House Tour

Climb the Ladder

March 11, 2023March 9, 2023 MichaelStephenWills13 Comments

Overview

A visit to Balcony House is a 0.25-mile (0.4 km) hike. The tour requires walking down a 130-step metal staircase then, (1) climbing up one 32-foot (9.8 m) ladder to enter, two small ladders, and 12 uneven stone steps within the site.

(2) crawling through an 18-inch wide (46 cm) by 12-foot (3.7 m) long tunnel as you leave the site.

(3 – 5) ascending a 60-foot (18 m) open cliff face with uneven stone steps and two 17-foot (5 m) ladders to exit. Mesa Verde National Park, near Cortez, Montezuma County, Colorado.

Photograph and caption (above) is from the US Park Service, Mesa Verde, Balcony House tour web site

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On the Mesa Rim

We purchased our timed tour ticket at the visitor center at the foot of the Mesa, essentially a flat top mountain rising dramatically from the surrounding plain. In the second photograph we are looking over the mesa rim overlooking Soda Canyon.

The tour is a small adventure, starting with a climb down into Soda Canyon and a climb up a 32 foot ladder. The ladder is solid and we had plenty of time to climb with one person ascending at a time. I was a bit overwhelmed by the experience and had my equipment tucked away for safety. I had to leave my sturdy tripod in the car. A more adventurous photographer captured the following ladder photograph.

photo: Ken Lund, CC BY-SA 2.0

Masonry

Here we are looking back to the entrance, where visitors crawl on hands and knees to enter.

Here is Pam twenty two (22) minutes into the tour. The structures are build into a naturally occurring cleft in the mesa cliff, below the rock shelf of the mesa top. The rock shelf is the roof above Pam.

Looking up to the ceiling above a rock and mud wall. The structures have been carefully, lovingly, conserved since the rediscovery of Mesa Verde in 1884. The conservation work began 1910.

The 38 rooms and two kivas house up to 30 people. The cliff northeast facing cliff provided little warmth from the sun in winter. At 7,000 feet and 37 degrees latitude, the mesa is cold wintertime — the average low being 18 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 8 Celsius). As other locations offer a southern exposure, the warmest side for the northern hemisphere, why was this site chosen by the ancients? The answer is found in the two water seeps emerging from the ground at the juncture geological layers where the water gathers and finds a way from surface rainfalls. The high desert climate here was dry then and now.

The walls demonstrate an enormous variety around basic patterns.

Plaza

I had enough time to capture these “fine art” views of Balcony House, looking back toward the entrance. The round, in-ground structures are kivas, ceremonial and communal gathering spaces.

Possibly the most adventurous and potentially frightening tour component was the end, crawling on hands and knees along an 18 inch wide (46 centimeters) 12 foot long (3.7 meters) tunnel followed by a climb up a 60 foot (20 meters) open (exposed to falling over) cliff face.

Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

Mesa Verde Textures

Building Techniques

March 4, 2023March 2, 2023 MichaelStephenWills

Transition

When the ancestral Puebloans moved from living next to their fields, in adobe structures, to these cliff dwellings, their building techniques were left behind.

Stone and Mud Mortar with wood beams. Mesa Verde National Park, Montezuma County, near Cortez, Colorado.

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Balcony House

Mud mortar was used to bind stones. Wood poles were used for to construct floors. These are walls captured during the Ranger guided tour of Balcony House.

This flat Kiva floor was achieved through clay, softened with water, formed and allowed to dry.

Clay Kiva Floor. Mesa Verde National Park, Montezuma County, near Cortez, Colorado.

Cliff Palace

In this wall the poles rotted and crumbled, leaving behind these characteristic holes.

These architects excelled with adapting to the materials at hand.

The walls demonstrate an enormous variety around basic patterns.

Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

Kiva, Sipapu, Omphalos

Place Sense

March 3, 2023March 1, 2023 MichaelStephenWills2 Comments

Discovery

How many of the Mesa Verde 23 kivas can you identify in this panorama? You many need to read this post before answering.

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What is a Kiva?

A kiva is a space used by Puebloans for rites and political meetings, many of them associated with the kachina belief system. Among the modern Hopi and most other Pueblo peoples, “kiva” means a large room that is circular and underground and used for spiritual ceremonies.

Similar subterranean rooms are found among ruins in the North American South-West, indicating uses by the ancient peoples of the region including the ancestral Puebloans, the Mogollon, and the Hohokam.

A portion of Cliff Palace including many Kivas, the round and square towers.

Those used by the ancient Pueblos of the Pueblo I Period and following, designated by the Pecos Classification system developed by archaeologists, were usually round and evolved from simpler pit-houses.

For the Ancestral Puebloans, these rooms are believed to have had a variety of functions, including domestic residence along with social and ceremonial purposes.

The entire Cliff Palace from the overlook, from a single wide-angle image.

During the late 8th century, Mesa Verdeans started building square pit structures that archeologists call protokivas. They were typically 3 or 4 feet (0.91 or 1.22 m) deep and 12 to 20 feet (3.7 to 6.1 m) in diameter. By the mid-10th and early 11th centuries, these had evolved into smaller circular structures called kivas, which were usually 12 to 15 feet (3.7 to 4.6 m) across.

Sipapu

Mesa Verde-style kivas included a feature from earlier times called a sipapu, which is a hole dug in the north of the chamber that is thought to represent the Ancestral Puebloans’ place of emergence from the underworld

Here is a close-up of the kiva floor of the Balcony House.

The sipapu is the smaller pit in the floor to the left (north side) and partially blocked by the kiva wall. The larger is a firepit. The small wall to the right is placed to deflect airflow from a floor vent.

Balcony House Kiva, to the right is the floor vent in wall and deflector stone. There is the firepit and a tiny portion of the sipapu at the left edge.

I count 14 Kivas in the Cliff Palace panorama, including some with broken walls.

What is the Connection, if any, between Omphalos and Sipapu?

The global coordinate system was known to ancient Greeks, in fact they are credited with the discovery a system to locate any place on earth, an insight contained in myths of how Zeus founded Delphi as the “center of the world,” the place from which divinity irrupts, by setting two eagles at opposing ends of the world to fly, starting at the same time, same speed, the central world point identified by where the eagles’ paths crossed.

Bronze Coin from the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, reign of Ptolemy VI 2nd Century BC with the head of Zeus on one side and double eagles riding a thunderbolt on the other

To signify Delphi as this center a religious stone artifact, called an omphalos, was placed.

Most accounts locate the Delphi omphalos in the adyton (sacred part of the temple) near the Pythia (oracle). The stone sculpture itself (which may be a copy) is there to this day. The surface is a carving of a knotted net, the center hollow and widening towards the base. The omphalos represents the stone which Rhea wrapped in swaddling clothes, pretending it was newborn Zeus, in order to deceive Cronus. (Cronus was the father who swallowed his children so as to prevent them from usurping him as he had deposed his own father, Uranus).

The omphalos stone was believed to allow direct communication with the gods. Historians theorize the stone was hollow to allow intoxicating vapors breathed by the Oracle (priestess) to channel through it. However, understanding of the use of the omphalos is uncertain due to destruction of the site by Theodosius I and Arcadius in the 4th century CE.

That leaves us with the word, omphalos. In Greek the original meaning is navel, the anatomical reminder to humans of their source.

Comparing and contrasting these terms used by cultures separated widely by geography and time:

— sipapu is a religious symbol of the place ancestral peoples irrupted, born, into this world, emerging from the earth. From my readings, the word sipapu is a direct reference to the symbol. There are many sipapu, small holes in the floor of kivas (timetimes a hole in a wooden plank), representing a single place.

— omphalos is a religious symbol of where the divine irrupts into the world, from the earth, with direct linguistic natal (birth) associations. A single omphalos stone designates a single place.

Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

Chapin Valley Views

Northwest from the Mesa Verde Park Road

March 2, 2023February 25, 2023 MichaelStephenWills4 Comments

A pullover on the park road proves this, northwest morning view of the Mancos Valley. The lush grass in foreground is a reason the mesa is called “verde,” meaning green in the Spanish language.

The Mancos Valley has been settled since at least the 10th century AD, although various severe conditions in the mid to late 13th century saw the area and its multitude of small villages abandoned by the Ancient Pueblo People (Anasazi).

The Mancos area is dotted with inventoried and un-inventoried archeological sites, including both isolated houses and shelters and small village complexes. Mancos Valley residents were probably among those who withdrew to the cliff dwellings on Mesa Verde, perhaps for defensive purposes, due to climate change, or as part of concentration policy of possible invaders and occupiers of the region.

Control of the area was contested by nomadic Navajo and Ute people for centuries. Spanish friars and military passed through the area as part of the Old Spanish Trail connecting New Mexico and California in the 18th century. The name “Mancos” comes from the Domínguez–Escalante expedition of 1776, though the reason for the name remains unclear (see below). By some unverified accounts, the name Mancos refers to the crippled nature of the Spanish explorers’ horses after they crossed the San Juan Mountains. According to unverified lore, the horses were rejuvenated by the lush green grass in the Mancos Valley. Somewhere in the town is the point at which the expedition crossed the Rio Mancos on its way to California from Old Mexico. Mesa Verde National Park, Montezuma County, near Cortez, Colorado.

Reference

“Mancos, Colorado” Wikipedia

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Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills, All Rights Reserved

Round Tower of the Cliff Place

Imagine

March 1, 2023February 25, 2023 MichaelStephenWills4 Comments

Overviews

Looking over my photographs from Mesa Verde National Park I find the Cliff Palace Round Tower to be a unique structure. You can see it in this shot taken from the Cliff Palace Loop overlook…..

The Round Tower is on the upper left, between two kivas (appearing to be two round pits). The round shape of the tower is not readily apparent from this angle.

It is easier to see here from this photograph taken from the Cliff Palace footpath from the mesa top.

Here is a closer view, with surrounding structures for context.

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Inspiration and Influence

In 1941 the National Park Service commissioned noted photographer Ansel Adams to create a photo mural for the Department of the Interior Building in Washington, DC. The theme was to be nature as exemplified and protected in the U.S. National Parks. The project was halted because of World War II and never resumed.

The holdings of the National Archives Still Picture Branch include 226 photographs taken for this project, most of them signed and captioned by Adams (the following photograph had neither title or caption). Almost all are in the public domain, as is the following image. Adams was allowed free access to the ruins and had the luxury of time to stage perfect lighting.

The creator compiled or maintained the parent series, Ansel Adams Photographs of National Parks and Monuments, between 1941–1942. Ansel Adams provided no caption to this photograph; this information was compiled by Michael Stephen Wills from the United States National Archives Catalog “Series: Ansel Adams Photographs of National Parks and Monuments”.

Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter’s Desert View Watchtower (1932), on the Grand Canyon’s South Rim, was inspired in part by this round tower. She traveled throughout the southwest to find inspiration and authenticity for her buildings. The architecture of the ancestral Puebloan people of the Colorado Plateau served as her model. This particular tower was patterned after those found at Hovenweep and the Round Tower of Mesa Verde. Colter indicated that it was not a copy of any that she had seen, but rather modeled from several cliff dwellings.

The following photographs are my closest approximation to Ansel Adams composition. Taken during a public Ranger guided tour of Cliff Palace, I was standing next to the Square Tower (see my post “Square Tower as Viewed from the Kiva.”

The same image produced as Black and White.

Extension

The Round Tower is more compelling when viewed from below, in the following photographs.

Looking through these images I challange you, the reader, to compare the Round Tower with the right angles, straight walls of the other above ground structures and, then, the round Kivas in the grounds, essentially the Round Tower is an extension of the round kiva and sipapu toward the heavens.

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Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

Square Tower House

Viewed from Mesa Top Loop Road

February 28, 2023February 25, 2023 MichaelStephenWills9 Comments

Featuring the tallest standing structure in the park, an intact kiva roof, original plaster and paint, and plentiful rock art, Square Tower House is one of Mesa Verde’s most impressive cliff dwellings.

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Located off the Mesa Top Loop, at the head of Navajo Canyon, this cliff dwelling is only accessible on a ranger guided tour, for a fee. Tickets for the tour are limited, so get them before your arrive. There is a viewing point just off the loop road. Mesa Verde National Park, Montezuma County, near Cortez, Colorado.

The two rooms here are what seems to be a round wall, possibly a kiva ruin, on the left and a single story building, on the right, being the single wall with an opening for access. They probably blocked the opening in cold weather to conserve heat. It is possible this site had a special use and was occupied for a limited period of time each season/year.

Around the Kiva

Imagine

February 27, 2023February 28, 2023 MichaelStephenWills10 Comments

Discovery

Imagine yourself as Richard Wetherill in December 1888 rounding up stray cattle on a mesa top, in a snow storm, riding through a very familiar pinyon and juniper forest. You ride to the mesa edge overlooking a huge canyon and, in the distance and through the snow, see a this “magnificent city.”

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Today

The site is protected and access restricted to these tour groups. I skipped the lecture, as interesting as it was, to use the time to capture the images in these blogs. Here is an overview of the northeastern Cliff Palace, including the square (see previous blog) and round towers with the tour group gathered around one of the Cliff Palace kivas.

Sipapu

Here is a close-up of the kiva floor of the Balcony House. Sipapu is a Hopi word for the small hole or indentation in the floor of kivas used by the Ancient Pueblo Peoples and modern-day Puebloans. It symbolizes the portal through which their ancient ancestors first emerged to enter the present world.

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Square Tower as viewed from the Kiva

Cliff Palace Access

February 26, 2023February 25, 2023 MichaelStephenWills3 Comments

Pam and I arrived at Mesa Verde early one summer morning in July and spent time understanding the landscape of the ruin sites and the lighting. I made a mental visit plan and decided to arrive at the cliff palace mid-afternoon and it turned out, of the tour times available, this was the best. It is possible to make special arrangements for access, to take photographs, and maybe I will give this a try in my next life.

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Four Stories

This four-story square tower, located at the south end of the alcove, at one time reached the ceiling. Access to the upper rooms was provided by hatchways in the lower room roofs.

What about that T-shaped door?

On the fourth floor, a T-shaped doorway suggests a balcony because that type of opening in the wall, designed to minimize the area, was used as a doorway.

Bend over Backwards

Inside the tower are well preserved wall paintings. To view them, you side in that lower opening, facing outwards and, bending backwards, look up into the tower. You need to hold onto the wall to do this and its the only time we were allowed to touch the ruin.

The Kiva

The modern wooden ladder rises from a kiva platform. Notice the level of wear on the top of the ladder posts. There are three kivas visible from the tower and at a later time I might post about these.

Summer Views from Chapin Mesa

North-Northeast to the San Juan Mountains

February 25, 2023February 25, 2023 MichaelStephenWills2 Comments

Chapin Mesa is the site of the Mesa Verde Anasazi ruins Balcony House and Cliff Palace. These are the views you see before the descent below the cliff rim to visit Balcony House.

These views from the Chapin Mesa rim are companions to two photographs of Balcony House, taken on the same morning. You are looking northeast across Soda Canyon, to a thunderstorm building above the San Juan mountains in the distance. Route 550 from Durango to Silverton climbs passes into these peaks, on the way to Telluride. Chapin Mesa is part of Mesa Verde National Park.

The following fine art image is a combination of the previous photographs

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The Ancient Doors to Mesa Verde

Two Ancient Cliff Swellings

February 24, 2023February 25, 2023 MichaelStephenWills5 Comments

The Anasazi (“ancient ones”) constructed 15 rooms on a 10 foot deep cliff alcove and used a toe-trail (literally a series of depressions in the rock used to gain traction) to climb to the mesa top (shown in this photograph) and the canyon.

A toe-trail security feature is the necessity to start using the correct hand/foot combination, otherwise there will be a point from which it is impossible to proceed. There are 15 rooms here: a kiva, on the far left, a multi-story building, on the right, with 4 upper rooms and 10 ground floor spaces. They probably blocked the openings in cold weather to conserve heat.

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The Anasazi had gardens on the mesa top or the canyon, plus they hunted and gathered wild foods. In the gardens, they planted corn, bean, squash and watermelon in the rich soil. They also gathered wild plants and herbs such as bee-weed, ground cherry, milkweed, cattail, wolf berry and sedge grass Cliff dwelling alcoves include a seep spring, a seam in the rock through which a small amount of water flowed. Imagine the difficulty of hauling water every day if there was not a water source in the alcove.

Can you find the unnamed ruin also in this canyon, we call it “Cliff Canyon”? These ruins are outside the national park boundary, inside the Ute Mountain Ute Indian Reservation.

The “window” of this cliff dwelling (ruin) was actually a door!! The Anasazi (“ancient ones”) constructed two rooms in this narrow cliff alcove.

Cliff dwelling alcoves include a seep spring, a seam in the rock through which a small amount of water flowed. Imagine the difficulty of hauling water every day if there was not a water source in the alcove. The large juniper to the left attests to a water source, since it grows from a shared crevice.

The protective alcove was deeper in the past. The desert varnish (the dark marking) above the alcove marks a place where water seeps from the cliff and, in cold weather, expands under the overlying rock, causing it to fall. Can you see where the cliff face has fallen above the ruin? The lack of desert varnish shows the rock fall was relatively recent.