Manitou Cliff Dwellings, Colorado Springs

I'm still catching up, slowly!

 

Our next stop was Colorado Springs, KOA, just off I25 it’s a very handy place to stay as it’s within easy driving distance of lots of the places we wanted to visit.

 

We arrived on a lovely, hot, sunny day, but wouldn’t you just know it a storm passed through and the next day it was cold, grey and drizzly.   As the day wore on the drizzle stopped and we decided to visit Manitou Cliff Dwellings.

 

Originally located in McElmo Canyon, not far from Mesa Verde and Dolores, Colorado, the Anasazai ruins date back to between 800 and 1,000 years ago.

  

In 1904 there was no protection for historic ruins from looters and pot hunters, so Virginia McClure and the original founders of the Colorado Cliff Dwellers Association hired William Crosby and the Manitou Cliff Dwellings Ruins Company to relocate the ruins in order to preserve them.

 

It took several years for them to be packaged and moved by oxen to Dolores, Colorado, where they were loaded onto the railroad, shipped to Colorado Springs and brought to Cliff Canyon by horse and wagon.

When the dwellings were reconstructed they used concrete mortar rather than adobe mud/clay mortar used by the Anasazi, this means that you can walk inside and through the dwellings.

It’s an interesting place and we enjoyed our visit.

Have fun, we are!