This is a photo of me climbing the ladder up to Spruce Tree House at Mesa Verde N.P. in May 1978. From 1977 to 1982, my late husband and I lived and travelled in our camper van, visiting most of our National Parks. As he was dying from cancer at age 50, he said how happy he was that we had carved out the time to do this while we were young. A quote from Thoreau that meant a lot to us was read at his funeral: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” To us, our parks form the bedrock of our lives.
Sincerely,
Mesa Verde National Park
This World Heritage Site preserves more than 600 cliff dwellings typical of the Ancestral Puebloan culture, which lasted from about 450 to 1300. The allure of this park is not only the remarkable ruins, but also the mystery of the people who inhabited them.
State(s): Colorado
Established: 1906
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Greetings from Mesa Verde National Park
We moved to Colorado in 2021, and the first national park we visited when we moved was Mesa Verde National Park. I had fond memories of going there as a child and vividly remembered the cliff dwellings. Our boys loved touring the dwellings, and there was a Park Ranger there…
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