About 1400 years ago, long before any European exploration of the New World, a group of Indians living in the Four Corners region chose Mesa Verde for their For over 700 years their descendants lived and flourished here, eventuallybuilding elaborate stone cities in the sheltered recesses of the canyon walls. Thenin the late 1200s, within the span of one or two generations, they abandoned theirhomes and moved away.Crossing an imaginary boundary into the region known as the AmericanSouthwest, you enter a place as culturally different from the rest of the U.S. asAsia or Egypt. For more than a millennium, various Indian cultures have lived,worked, worshipped, and died here, bestowing a distinctive ambiance to the land. And yet, both the people and their beliefs are truly Native American.The Four Corners area is a melange of sights and experiences. In a singleday, you can drive through miles of empty silence, broken only by bold plateaus,massive sandstone monoliths, and red rock, or hike into a remote canyon, once thehome of hundreds of cliff-dwelling Anasazi Indians. There are over 16,000archaeological sites in the region. At a quiet, dusty pueblo you can still seechildren playing on flat rooftops, or women baking bread in beehive-shaped earthenovens.Cortez is the ideal jumping-off point for exploring the Four Corners region. In a large valley among the mountains and open sagebrush lands of southwesternColorado, Cortez developed as a trading center for nearby stock ranches. Throughout the valley, youll notice agricultural fields plowed or planted with crops,their rolling hills dotted with mounds of rock and rubble. Often, these knolls areall that remain of ancient one or two-story Anasazi dwellings. The Cortez CulturalCenter, in cooperation with the University of Colorado offers American Indiandance and cultural programs in its grand performance plaza. Mesa Verde National Park, which occupies part of a large plateau rising high a...
