Galleries » Lion Canyon - Ute Mtn Tribal Park

The Ute Mountain Tribal Park in southwestern Colorado was created to preserve significant remnants of the Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi) people, including spectacular cliff dwellings and rock art. Access to the park which is along the Mancos River and tributary canyons – and adjacent to Mesa Verde National Park is by guided tour only.

The Anasazi built their cliff dwellings beneath overhangs and in shallow caves within the solid rock layer just below the top of the mesa. The Ancestral Pueblo inhabitants of Johnson and Lion Canyons lived on the adjacent mesa tops prior to the construction of the cliff dwellings. The first phase of construction in the rock overhangs took place from 1130 to 1160. A second and final phase took place from 1195 to 1240 CE. It is thought that the cliff dwellings were at least partially abandoned between these periods, as the second phase work involved some apparent dismantling of the earlier construction. Final abandonment took place around 1250 CE, thirty or forty years before the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings were thought abandoned. Archaeologists closely estimate these dates using tree-ring analysis on the timbers found in the structures. In Tree House dwelling is a rock ledge that is inscribed by two of the Wetherill brothers with the dates 1888 and 1890. The Wetherills, from the Mancos River drainage, were the first white men to discover the cliff dwellings in the Mesa Verde region.