Yellowstone protected geysers. Yosemite protected granite. In 1906, Mesa Verde became the first national park created for a different reason entirely: to protect what people had built.
A Different Kind of Founding Document
On June 29, 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt established Mesa Verde National Park explicitly "to preserve the works of man," language the National Park Service itself flags as making it the first national park of its kind. Every national park created before it, Yellowstone in 1872, Yosemite and Sequoia in 1890, Mount Rainier in 1899, existed to protect natural landscapes. Mesa Verde existed to protect what Ancestral Puebloan builders had left behind.
That distinction mattered enough to shape the legislation itself, arriving after Congress had already spent several years wrestling with earlier bills aimed at protecting the same cliff dwellings from looting.
Plan Your Mesa Verde Visit
A World Heritage Site since 1978. Build the ranger-guided cliff dwelling tours into your itinerary.
Open the Trip PlannerA UNESCO World Heritage Site Since 1978
UNESCO designated Mesa Verde a World Heritage Site on September 8, 1978, one of the first seven sites selected in the United States for cultural recognition, out of 23 U.S. World Heritage Sites today. Within the park's boundaries, nearly 5,000 archaeological sites have been identified, and at least 600 of them are cliff dwellings, spanning roughly 600 to 1300 CE of continuous occupation.
Cliff Palace alone, the largest of these dwellings, holds around 150 rooms and 23 kivas. The founding language that made Mesa Verde different from every park before it turned out to be prophetic: this mesa held far more than anyone knew in 1906, and it's still being catalogued.
- Established JUNE 29, 1906
- UNESCO World Heritage Site SEPT 8, 1978
- Archaeological sites identified NEARLY 5,000
- Cliff dwellings among them AT LEAST 600
The 1906 founding date and language, the UNESCO designation date, the archaeological site count, and the cliff dwelling count checked against the National Park Service's World Heritage and park history materials for Mesa Verde. The exact legislative signing date has minor variation across NPS's own sources (June 29 versus June 30); June 29 is used here as the more commonly cited date.
Every other early national park asked visitors to look at something nature made. Mesa Verde asked them to look at something people made, and to take that seriously enough to protect it the same way. Nearly five thousand sites later, that founding idea has outgrown anything Roosevelt's signature could have anticipated in 1906.