Mesa Verde National Park guide · 1 min read
Virginia McClurg and Saving Mesa Verde
Virginia McClurg was a persistent advocate for the ancient homes that now lie within Mesa Verde National Park.
For nearly two decades she worked to convince people in the United States and Europe that these ruins deserved protection. Her poems were printed in widely read magazines, and she delivered talks both at home and abroad, continuing to press the cause.
Through the Federation of Women's Clubs she gained the backing of 250,000 women. She also formed the Colorado Cliff Dwellers Association, which aimed to protect the cliff dwellings of Colorado, recover as many original objects as possible, and spread knowledge about the people who lived there. Lucy Peabody, another activist, took the same cause to lawmakers in Washington, meeting with members of Congress.
Her work helped bring legal protection to the region's ruins. Goodman Point Pueblo gained federal protection in 1889, and no earlier pre-Columbian ruin in the Mesa Verde region had received that status. It also became the first site of its kind protected anywhere in the country. Concern over artifacts taken away by a Swedish expedition added urgency to the effort.
Looting and destruction by people profiting from the artifact trade prompted President Theodore Roosevelt to create Mesa Verde National Park. It was the first park in the United States set aside for archaeological remains instead of the landscape's natural features. Inside its boundaries, researchers have documented 4,372 sites, among them more than 600 cliff dwellings.
Start at the Mesa Verde Visitor and Research Center, which sits along Highway 160 ahead of the park's entrance booths. Its exhibits are accessible and cover Ancestral Pueblo culture and daily life. Cliff Palace, one of the ruins stabilized in the early twentieth century, is visible from the canyon rim.
