Mesa Verde National Park is located in Montezuma County, in Southwest Colorado. It protects some of the best-preserved Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites in the United States. Created by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, the park occupies 52,485 acres near the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. With more than 600 cliff dwellings, Mesa Verdean villages thrived from 1150 to 1300, during which inhabitants constructed massive, multi-story buildings. Structures built during the Pueblo III were continuously inhabited for two hundred years or more. At the start of the 13th century, more than 20,000 people lived in or near the Mesa Verde complex. The area saw moderate population increases during the following decades, from 1225 to 1260.
The majority of Mesa Verdeans lived in large pueblos that housed several families and more than one hundred people. Many of those are available for exploration today, principally Cliff Palace, Long House, Square Tower House, Spruce Tree House, Balcony House, Mug House and the Sun Temple Ruins. After 1270, the area suffered from especially cold temperatures. Despite challenging conditions, the Puebloans continued to farm the area until a severely dry period from 1276 to 1299 ended seven hundred years of continuous human occupation at Mesa Verde.
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