Large group · 8 days
Large Group Tour: Colorado National Parks
Denver → Rocky Mountain National Park
- Rocky Mountain National Park, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado
- Large group, 20+
$3,065from / personCustom-priced
Destination
Mesa Verde National Park
Guided tours to Mesa Verde National Park, and other attractions and parks in the Southwest. Lodging and adventure provided.
Protecting the majority of Ancestorial Puebloan archaeological sites in the Southwest, Mesa Verde National Park has a long history of Native American habitation. These sites are the largest and most well-preserved cliff-dwellings built by a culture of people that occupied this area around 1000 AD.
Today, visitors can walk through these elaborate cliff-dwellings and experience what it was like to live as a Native American around that time. Throughout the park, there are numerous cliff dwellings and other evidence of habitation that makes visiting Mesa Verde feel like you’re stepping back into time.
Hikes in Mesa Verde
Browse through the hiking options in Mesa Verde National Park
Mesa Verde National Park in photographs
Trips that go here
$3,799from / person
Small group · 8 days
National Parks of Colorado
Denver → Rocky Mountain National Park
- Rocky Mountain National Park, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado
- Small group, 2–14
$3,799from / person
Departing from
Planning a trip to Mesa Verde National Park
Mesa Verde protects what people built rather than what water carved. There are around 5,000 known archaeological sites in the park and some 600 cliff dwellings, put into the alcoves of the canyon walls by Ancestral Puebloan people who lived here for more than seven hundred years and left in the late 1200s.
The famous dwellings are entered on a ranger-led ticketed tour, and only in season — Cliff Palace, Balcony House and Long House each involve ladders, low passages or a climb, and the tickets are limited and sell out. Booked ahead is the difference between going inside one and looking at it from a viewpoint.
What is open year-round is the Mesa Top Loop and the overlooks, which is a real half-day on its own. Allow for the approach: the entrance road climbs steeply and it is around forty-five minutes from the park gate to the main sites.
The park sits in Colorado’s south-west corner near Cortez, about an hour from Durango, which is the usual base for it.