MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK

Mesa Verde National Park, encompassing over 52,000 acres, is located in the high plateau country of southwestern Colorado between Cortez and Mancos. The Park was created through an Act of Congress signed by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906. Mesa Verde is famous for its extraordinary and remarkably well-preserved cliff dwellings, pueblos, and kivas. The global significance of Mesa Verde was recognized by the United Nations through its selection in 1978 as one of the twelve original World Cultural Heritage sites.

"The great result from Roosevelt's battle for conservation, which I believe will glorify him...to heroic proportions...is that where he found wide stretches of desert he left fertile States, that he saved from destruction, that he seized from the hands of the spoilers rivers and valleys which belonged to the people, and that he kept for the people mineral lands of untold value. Nor did he work for material and sanitary prosperity alone; but he worked also for Beauty. He reserved as National Parks for the use and delight of men and women forever some of the most beautiful regions in the United States."
-- William Roscoe Thayer on Theodore Roosevelt, 1919
 

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