A Palatial Mystery
Mile 1,351, Mesa Verde National Park, CO
A look from one end of Cliff Palace to the other. Most of the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde were built from 1190-1280—and, by 1300, they were all abandoned. There are many theories as to why this happened, the most popular of which is that a severe, prolonged drought starved the Puebloans out to more fertile lands. From there, the dwellings went virtually unnoticed until 1888, when a couple of cowboys stumbled upon the area.