Mesa Verde National Park: Long House

Our third, and final adventure of the day took place at Mesa Verde National Park. We made the long drive from Cortez to Wetherill Mesa with a little bit of uncertainty. Severe afternoon thunderstorms rolled through the area. Luckily, they had subsided by the time of our arrival. 

We drove to the trailhead, and used the restroom before making our way into the canyon for our tour.

Long House is the largest dwelling on Wetherill Mesa and contains about 150 rooms, 21 kivas, and a row of upper storage rooms. 

The tour consists of a couple sets of ladders to access upper portions of the dwelling.

In several locations throughout the dwelling "No. 15" is carved into the rock. These inscriptions were carved by Swedish scientist Gustaf Nordenskiold who visited Mesa Verde in 1891 and excavated many of the sites which he numbered. 

We learned on our tour that Long House may have been home to as many as 175 people and features an unusually large public plaza. We all had an opportunity to peek inside this internal passageway/room.