Wondering what tour to take while visiting Mesa Verde National Park? It is always a good idea to plan ahead. Visit the NPS website for the park, here. This is the best place to learn about what tours are currently available and what areas of the park may be closed. Then head to Recreation.gov to make your reservations! I recommend downloading the app and checking it often. Different parks have different booking windows and tours often sell out very quickly. Here is what we found to do!
Entering the Park
The park entrance sign and visitor center are located right off Colorado Route 160. The location of the visitor center can be found here. The furthest cliff dwellings are an hour’s drive from the visitor center, make sure you take this into account when planning your arrival time.
Where we stayed
One option to break up the driving and immerse yourself in Mesa Verde is to stay at the Far View Lodge. This is the only in-park lodging, located a half hour from the visitor center. We spent 2 nights here in 2021 and were very pleased with our stay.
After our second day in the park, we dined in the Metate Dining room (reservations recommended, more info here) located in the Lodge’s registration building. The entire family loved their meals which contained a lot of locally inspired flavors.
Above is the view at sunset from our balcony at Far View Lodge. Not only did the lodge’s location get us closer to the cliff dwellings and maximize our time in the park, but the real show occurred after dark. Mesa Verde sits at the center of the darkest skies remaining in the contiguous United States.
Driving Mesa Top Ruins Road
Day 1, after leaving the visitor center and before checking into Far View Lodge around 4:00 pm, we made some stops along Mesa Top Ruins Road.
Knife Edge
From the Montezuma Valley Overlook, the remnants of an old park road can be viewed.
Park Point
Another pull-off along Mesa Top Ruins Road was Park Point. Here you are 8572 feet above sea level. It is the highest point in the park. On a clear day, 3 different mountain ranges are in view. We had haze due to forest fires in the west but it was still a great spot to stretch our legs on the short paved path up to the fire tower.
After checking in at the lodge, we ventured out to see our first cliff dwellings! From the lodge, there are two routes to cliff dwellings. Mesa Top Ruins Road continues for ten minutes from the lodge and splits into 2 loops just after the Spruce Tree House area. The left loop takes you to Cliff Palace, perhaps the park’s most famous dwellings. The right loop takes you to Square Tower House. Both loops contain several other stops as well.
The other route from the lodge is Wetherill Mesa Road. Though closed in 2023, this was the route we took to see Long House and Step House in 2021.
Spruce Tree House
We arrived at our first cliff dwelling during magic hour. The sandstone was beautifully bathed in the light of the setting sun. The view of Spruce Tree House below is just a short walk from the main parking lot. Also, accessible from this area are the Petroglyph Point trail and the Chapin Mesa Museum.
Cliff Palace from Sun Temple
In 2020, the portion of Mesa Top Ruins Road that looped by Balcony House and Cliff Palace was closed. There is a great view of Cliff Palace from the Mesa Top Loop Road, however. By driving this loop and stopping at Sun Temple, we were able to view Cliff Palace at sunset and then again the next day shortly after sunrise.
Square Tower House
For our second day at the park, we started with the view of Cliff Palace from Sun Temple shown above and then headed around the Mesa Top Loop again to tour Square Tower House. This was one of the tours we booked in advance and due to the small size of the group, this tour sells out fast. It was totally worth it if you have the opportunity to go!
More information for the Square Tower House tour can be found here.
Long House
Located on Wetherill Mesa, parking for Long House was 40 minutes away from where we ended our Square Tower House tour. It was fairly easy to do both on the same day. We booked the Square Tower tour first for 8:30 am. Then booked the Long House tour for 1:00 pm. Even with the drive between the two mesas, this gave us time to grab a quick lunch from our room between the two tours. Cliff Palace tours were not running in 2021 and Long House tours are not running in 2023 so make sure to always check the NPS site for the most up-to-date information.
The meeting point for the Long House tour was a 20-minute walk on a paved walkway from the parking lot. The trail to Long House is another 10-minute walk beyond that, so be sure to leave yourself enough time.
Rangers are located at different stops along the path through Long House. This was different from the single ranger that accompanied us to Square Tower. There were a lot more people on this tour but there were enough rangers to answer our questions. We were the first group, of the first tour, for the afternoon. Since there were no tours before us, it felt like we had the place to ourselves. If booking, you may want to select the first tour after lunch as well to have a more intimate experience.
Step House
Also located on Wetherill Mesa, this area is a self-guided walk-through a lesser-preserved cliff dwelling. Though not as intricate as Square Tower, Cliff Palace, or Long House this did not require an advanced ticket. The entrance is close to the parking lot for Long House so we checked it out before heading back to Far View for dinner.
Far View Area
One last stop was a small village of dwellings near the lodge, referred to as the Far View community. The Far View sites were believed to be established before the development of cliff dwellings by the Ancestral Pueblo people.
On day 3 we left the park early in the morning to head to our next destinations, the Four Corners Monument and Navajo Tribal Park, Hovenweep National Monument, Newspaper Rock, and finally Moab, Utah where we planned to hike the next day to Delicate Arch! Sign up below to follow along!
