Mesa Verde National Park - Temple of New Fire

 

George Lytle Beam

  1868 - 1935 (biography)

c. 1909  

gelatin silver photograph 

7 7/8 x 9 11/16" image and paper size 

unsigned, as ususal 

not stated 

stamp of the Denver Rio Grande Railroad on verso reads: "The Denver and Rio Grande Western R.R. - Photograph by George L. Beam, Denver, Colorado"; typed description beneath stamp (including title) 

 

semi gloss photopaper 

published 

Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad 

23163 

$65.00 

Temple of New Fire, now known as Long House, is situated in the Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. Beam was hired by the National Park Service to document the landscapes that ran along the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad system, just prior to the 1911 opening of the Colorado National Monument.

The description on the verso of this photograph, written by an archivist for the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad, reads: "Mesa Verde National Park, (the Land of the Cliff Dwellers), Southwestern Colorado. Reached by Government Auto Road from Mancos, Colo., on the Denver & Rio Grande Western System.

"Temple of New Fire. This was formerly called 'Painted House' because of certain decorations on the walls; but on the clearing away of the debris a few years ago by Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, formerly Chief of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, a floor plan was discovered which convinced the Doctor that this was the place to which the ancient inhabitants came to renew their fire, annually, which was probably attended with some ceremony. The ruin is located in Fewkes Canon [sic]. The structure in the distance was probably the dwelling of the caretaker."

According the Mesa Verde National Park website, "The cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde are some of the most notable and best preserved in the North American Continent. Sometime during the late 1190s, after primarily living on the mesa top for 600 years, many Ancestral Pueblo people began living in pueblos they built beneath the overhanging cliffs. The structures ranged in size from one-room storage units to villages of more than 150 rooms. While still farming the mesa tops, they continued to reside in the alcoves, repairing, remodeling, and constructing new rooms for nearly a century. By the late 1270s, the population began migrating south into present-day New Mexico and Arizona. By 1300, the Ancestral Puebloan occupation of Mesa Verde ended."