Mesa Verde

Biography

Mesa Verde National Park (Mesa Verde means "Green Plateau" in Spanish) is a United States national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado. The park protects some of the best preserved ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites in the United States. The entrance is located fifteen kilometers east of the town of Cortez. Founded by Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, the park covers 21,000 hectares near the Four Corners region of the American southwest. With more than 5,000 sites, including 600 cliff dwellings, it is the largest archaeological reserve in the United States. Mesa Verde (from the Spanish for "green table") is best known for its structures such as Cliff Palace, considered the largest cliff dwelling in North America.