Park Entrance Road Corridor: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Mesa Verde National Park

Regions 6, 7, & 8 Park Cultural Landscapes Program

Inventory Unit Description: The combined period of significance for the Park Entrance, Entrance Road, and Ruins Road extends from 1907 to 1957. The development of the circulation system commenced with a 1907 road survey which established a wagon route from the northern boundary of the park to Spruce Tree Camp and concluded in 1957 with the final abandonment of the Knife Edge—a narrow area along a cliff with steep embankments to both sides of the road. The opening of the Prater-Morefield Tunnel in 1956 facilitated the abandonment of this dangerous road section. During the 1920s, the collaboration between the NPS and Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) produced substantial advances in the work completed at Mesa Verde National Park. The 1933 Park Master Plan contained detailed designs for intersections, parking areas, loop developments and locations of small-scale landscape features. Improvements continued into the 1930s as road building was funded on a scale never before realized. Through public works allotments and the efforts of the CCC, safe and naturalistic road systems were constructed in the park. The achievements of the road program allowed the NPS to make the unique archeological sites more accessible to the public. Curvilinear alignment, asymmetrical topographic manipulation, stone culverts and drop-inlets, and naturalistic treatment and rounding of roadside slopes remain identifiable characteristics of the Entrance Road and Ruins Road at Mesa Verde. The curvilinear nature of the road reveals only a portion of paved surface within the immediate viewshed, as opposed to a road that is straight, thus providing visual diversity. These elements of NPS road design convey a feeling and association that dates to the period of significance. This component landscape has been analyzed in three sub-units: Park Entrance, Entrance Road and Ruins Road. The Park Entrance, Entrance Road and Ruins Road comprise the historic designed landscape of this inventory. The inventory unit is laid out as follows: • Park Entrance – includes a 4-acre developed site at the intersection of U.S. Highway 160 and the park entrance road. • Entrance Road - Approximately 500-feet wide and twenty miles long or 1230 acres, the road corridor traverses the length of the park in a general north to south direction winding through the cuestas (a mesa that has a slight slope) and canyons of the park. • Ruins Road – For the purposes of this CLI, this road system comprised of the Mesa Top Loop and the Cliff Place Loop, includes two six-mile loops, a thirty foot wide road corridor totaling 44 acres. The loop roads lead visitors to mesa top sites and overlooks.

Park Entrance Road Corridor: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Mesa Verde National Park

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