On the Ute Reservation south of Cortez, the park offers guided tours to secluded Anasazi Ruins
Story by Samantha Tisdel Wright
[Towaoc Colorado] A visit to the Ute Mountain Tribal Park is as much a lesson in Ute culture as ancestral Puebloan heritage. The park, located on the Ute reservation south of Cortez, offers guided tours to secluded Anasazi ruins. Self-tours are not permitted, Which makes a trip there all the more exceptional. Our Ute guide gently reminded us throughout the day of the sacredness of the area, often urging us to “listen to the birds, watch the clouds, call the wind.” Before descending into Lions Canyon to explore the cliff dwellings, he blessed each of us with water, and passed around a small bag of red “paint” (actually a fine powder made of ground hematite) to mark our faces and bodies as we felt stirred.
The cliff dwellings—we visited four groups of them spread out along a one and a half mile footpath inside the narrow, snaking Lions Canyon—are on a much more intimate scale than those at nearby Mesa Verde. There is a refreshing dearth of any interpretive signage whatsoever. The walk is fairly easy (a four-year-old boy in our group did just fine, as did several out-of-shape adults). It is necessary to climb several ladders along the way, including one that is 42 feet high, leading to the aptly named Eagle’s Nest ruins, suspended on a narrow ledge halfway up an alcove in the rim rock.
Signs of the Anasazis’ daily life are everywhere. Cliff and masonry blend gracefully. Diminutive corn cobs the size of women’s fingers lie scattered here and there. Beside the dwellings, broad, smooth wells have been worn into the sandstone underfoot, where women ground their daily corn, while chunks of fallen rim rock bear deep grooves like claw-marks where men sharpened their tools.
A day-long tour at the Ute Mountain Tribal Park includes stops in Mancos Canyon at an unexcavated kiva and several petroglyph sites, a long drive up to the top of a pinion and juniper forested plateau, lunch at the brink of Lions Canyon in a traditional Ute summer shelter made of pinion logs and cottonwood branches, and an afternoon hike through the cliff ruins.
Begin your guided tour at the modest Ute Tribal Park Museum, located at the junction of Highways 160 and 666, 20 miles south of Cortez. You can drive your own car into the park (it’s an 80 mile round trip and the road is dusty and corrugated), or ride in one of the tribe’s comfortable, air-conditioned vans. Bring plenty of water, a bagged lunch, sunscreen, a hat, and sturdy, comfortable walking shoes. Tours are offered daily May through October.
Ute Mountain Tribal Park
POB 109, Towaoc, Colo. 81334.
1-800-847-5485, 970 565-9653.
Visitors Center, 970 749-1452.
Photograph
Tree House Ruin at Ute Mountain Tribal Park. ©Samantha Tisdel Wright.