Mesa Verde National Park – As the sun sank behind Mesa Verde, the moccasin feet of American Indian buffalo dancers kicked up the dust of their ancestors’ land and kicked off this park’s official 100th birthday party.
About 1,000 people congregated in the park amphitheater for a celebration that had all the pomp befitting a century anniversary. A brass band, a color guard from the USS Mesa Verde, a Teddy Roosevelt lookalike, dozens of ladies in early 1900s dress and a parade of banners representing 24 tribes were all part of the festivities.
Park officials also announced a birthday gift: $11 million to build an 1,800-square-foot research center starting in October.
One hundred years ago, when Mesa Verde became a national park, the event was a far cry from this pull-out-all-the-stops celebration. Only the caw of the crows would have broken the stillness on this high mesa then. There was no celebration.
Spruce Tree House had not been excavated. The National Park Service had not been created. It was a 20-mile jaw-jarring wagon ride followed by a rugged 10-mile hike to get here.
Mesa Verde became a park – the first in the country dedicated to protecting cultural resources – with only the scratch of President Theodore Roosevelt’s pen on a proclamation in a White House office. Local newspapers ignored the occasion, according to historian and author Fred Blackburn, who dug through archives in a futile search for references to that momentous day.
Blackburn said he did find a front-page article in The London Times along with a drawing of Mesa Verde’s Cliff House. It was embellished with turrets to look like a cross between an ancient dwelling and an English castle.
“Here you didn’t even hear a squeak,” he said as he signed books at busy park headquarters.
A park official said more than 3,000 visitors came to the park Thursday for special events.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event,” said Cmdr. Shawn Lobree of the USS Mesa Verde, who traveled here from Miami.
Visitors sporting everything from turbans to tie- dye and tongue piercings to hearing aids streamed into the park past the charred trees of recent years’ fires – and some arrived at a surprise party.
“I was like, ‘Wait a minute – this is the date? This is the birthday?”‘ said Jason Hough of Des Moines, Iowa, as he peered into cliff dwellings.
Rich McClure of Bloomington, Ill., said he planned his motorcycle trip through the West to coincide with the birthday. “If you can make something like this, you should do it,” McClure said.
The birthday celebration is the culmination of three years of work, numerous donations, and events that began in December.
Park Superintendent Larry Weise said the celebration has also been the impetus for new programs at a park filled with dwellings and artifacts of a culture that lived here from about 500 B.C. to A.D. 1300.
Weise said new educational programs have been started with sister parks in Mexico and Belize and an educational institute is planned at Mesa Verde.
The park is also working with a foundation and several colleges and universities to create a 3-D imaging program of the park so that youngsters around the world can visit the cliff houses that were mysteriously abandoned by the ancient Puebloans two centuries before Christopher Columbus came to America.
“The opportunities are endless,” Weise said.
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com.
