Mesa Verde National Park - Cliff Palace

 

George Lytle Beam

  1868 - 1935 (biography)

c. 1909  

gelatin silver photograph 

7 3/4 x 9 5/16" image and paper size 

artist's blindstamp in lower left corner 

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) 

D&R.G. 2426 

semi gloss photopaper 

published 

Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad 

23165 

$100.00 

Cliff Palace 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 Colorado National Monument's formal opening in 1911.

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

"Cliff Palace. This is the largest of the many prehistoric ruins found in the Mesa Verde, being 300 feet long and having contained approximately 200 rooms, including 23 kivas, or underground council chambers, several of which may be seen in this picture."

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."