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Published: February 9th 2009
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The Far View Sites Trail at Mesa Verde is a short loop that has five major Ancestral Pueblo sites and a constructed reservoir. There are several large structures here within a very short distance. It is thought that this was one of the most densely populated areas in Mesa Verde. The trail starts in a plaza between the impressive Far View House to the north and Pipe Shrine House to the south. There are several interpretive signs and a trail guide available. Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado stays open in winter despite an elevation of up to 8500 feet. The twisty main road is snow plowed but most of the side roads are closed for the winter. The Far View Trail is close enough to the main road that it can also be hiked during the winter season
Far View House is the first stop along the Far View Trail, a tour of an ancient farming community. For all there is to see along this trail, there is only room for about ten vehicles here, compared to hundreds of parking spaces at the major cliff dwelling sites.
The Far View name was inspired by the commanding
view of the surrounding Four Corners country side. The Far View site was two stories and has 40 rooms on the ground floor.
The rooms and doorways are larger here than those in the cliff dwellings. Door and room size provide clues as to how the spaces may have been shared by families and clans.
The large size of the structure suggest that Far View Houses may have been a public building, where leaders addressed the needs of the larger community. This was one of the most densely populated areas of Mesa Verde. Nearly 50 villages have been identified, homes to hundreds of people from 900 to 1300 AD.
Four circular kivas are inside the walls, not visible to visitors, and a fifth one outside. The central kiva inside the walls is particularly large.
Far View House and Pipe Shrine House are two large mesa top pueblo sites facing each other across a plaza. The alcove cliff dweller sites draw the most attention at Mesa Verde but these two sites are very large and show the development of building skills and connections with the Chaco Canyon culture of northwest New Mexico.
I noticed during the
winter, that the clay soil here forms a sticky mud, common in the region but something not noticed in the dry summers. The rock alcove sites probably have less of a problem with mud. That would be a good reason for me to prefer to live there in winter but not one the archaeologists usually mention.
On the south side of the plaza is Pipe Shrine House, named for a dozen decorated clay pipes found in a kiva. Walking around the south end of Pipe Shrine House the view back towards Far View House gives a feeling for how busy this area must have been.
Pipe Shrine has 20 rooms on the ground floor and may have had a second story. The site was abandoned around 1300 AD so those pipes had been laying there for more than 600 years.
At Pipe Shrine House the interpretive information points out the differences in building styles of the walls. The single course walls on the north side contrast with the double course construction on the south side.
The double course construction is a later style, and is probably associated with multiple stories. The environment here is Pinon
Pine and Juniper trees mixed with the aromatic Big Sage Brush on a mesa top setting, with good canyon views a short distance away. In May the Service Berry bushes were in full bloom with white flowers.
A little north along the trail is Far View Tower. This site has 16 small one story rooms, three kivas and a round tower. The single story rooms are single course construction but the tower is double course. The function of towers is a mystery.
Modern Pueblo People still use kivas but not towers.
There are nearly 60 towers at Mesa Verde. This one doesn't appear to be positioned as a look out point, as some of them are. Sometimes there are tunnels connecting towers to kivas.
The typical interpretive information doesn't mention where troublemakers or visitors might have stayed. This site has that feel for me, a place where security is a concern. Line of sight signaling doesn't seem to be a reason for this tower as it doesn't have a good view, though others in the region have that.
A little bit off the trail to the east there are far views across the canyon
toward the LaPlata Mountains that are between Mesa Verde and the Durango area. The interpretive sign at nearby Mummy Lake shows that there is another constructed reservoir on the opposite mesa, and presumably more villages across the way.
Mummy Lake is one of four constructed reservoirs at Mesa Verde and the only one that is accessible. The alcove sites often have seep springs or the canyon bottom creeks for water supply but a mesa top site would have had to try to store the snow melt and summer storm water. The clay rich soil here probably compacted well to seal the bottom, but the evaporation is high in the sunny southwest. Earth lagoons are common in this region. It seems like the rock walls surrounding the lake would have been more to prevent erosion around the edges than to hold water. The sandstone itself is porous and the mortar would have leaked if constantly exposed to water.
I was surprised to see that the American Society of Civil Engineers presented an award in 2004 to Mummy Lake. a small reservoir built 700 years ago. There is a constructed channel that collects water from the uphill area to the
north. Water is diverted into the reservoir in a way that allows the silt to settle in the channel, leaving the reservoir water fit for drinking.
Further north the trail leads to Megalithic House, named for the larger stones used. Megalithic stones are also visible at Long House on Wetherill Mesa.
The trail loops back south to Coyote Village. The interpretive information here points out how the village grew over time. The Coyote Village has 30 ground floor rooms, five kivas, and a circular tower. This site is just to the south of the Far View House and can be an overlooked site on an overlooked trail.
This is a site where the arrangement of walls is observable. Some walls are tied together and some just abut one another, indicating original construction and later add on building.
This is also a site, like Pipe Shrine House, where single course and double course walls are visible, single course being an older style. I notice when looking at these structures that the circular kivas look like good circles, but the straight line walls often are not always very straight, as if the use of a string line hadn't been invented yet.
One of the kivas here has wood beams extending between the pilasters. The interpretive guide says that these might be drying racks, maybe like a country clothes dryer. It looked to me like these beams would make sitting in there uncomfortable, not the meeting room I would choose unless you wanted it to be a short meeting.
There are bins here that are thought to be places where women knelt and ground corn, or perhaps stored the ground corn. Different bins implies to me different types of material, perhaps like a salad bar.
See more at http://4cornershikers.blogspot.com
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