National Parks * * * * * 151 



Geologists find Crater Lake of special interest because of the way 

 Nature made it. Many volcanoes have had their peaks blown off. Mount 

 Rainier was one of these. But no other in the United States has fallen into 

 itself as did Mount Mazama. The evidence of this curious and titanic event 

 is quite conclusive, and the visitor to the park can see it for himself. The 

 slopes of the mountain were made of lava that ran, hot and fluid, from a 

 crater many thousands of feet higher. The pitch of these outward slopes 

 enables the scientist to tell with reasonable accuracy the probable height of 

 the volcano when the catastrophe took place. 



Crater Lake National Park is reached by train on the Southern Pacific 

 Railroad lines into Medford and Klamath Falls, at which stops motor 

 stages make the short trip to the park. A hotel on the rim of the lake offers 

 accommodations. For the motorist, the visit to the park is a short side trip 

 from the Pacific and Dalles-California highways. He will find, in addition to 

 the hotel, campsites, stores, filling stations. The park is open to travel from 

 late June or July 1 for as long as snow does not block the roads, generally 

 until October. 



MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK 



The Mesa Verde National Park was created to preserve the ruins of the 

 highest form of ancient American civilization found in the United States, 

 that of a nation of Indians resembling the modern Pueblos in characteristics, 

 whose homes still stand on the cliffs that line the Mancos River in southern 

 Colorado. The Indians who lived here have disappeared entirely. No trace 

 of their fate has been found by archaeologists. Their civilization, as indi 

 cated by the relics they left and by their cliff cities, was comparable in many 

 ways to that of the Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas of Peru. 



The Mesa Verde is fifteen miles long and eight miles wide. The Mancos 

 River flows along it, its banks forming narrow plains above which rise 

 walls of rock three to five hundred feet above the river. In these walls are 

 small canyons in which the ancient cliff dwellers built their homes, after the 

 manner of modern tenements. Apparently they sought safety from their 

 enemies. It is thought that their cliff cities were built about 1300 A.D. 



There are many ruins in Mesa Verde yet unexplored, awaiting the 

 pioneer who can experience anew the thrill of Richard and Alfred Wetherell, 

 who, while hunting in 1888, discovered, explored, and named the Cliff Palace, 

 one of the important ruins of the park. That is an unfortunate name, for 

 it is not the ruin of a palace at all, but the remains of a village with two 

 hundred rooms for family living and twenty-two sacred rooms for worship. 

 The Spruce Tree House, so called because of a great spruce growing out of 

 the remains, is a village that sheltered 350 inhabitants, high in the cliff. 



Antiquities are not the only attractions of Mesa Verde National Park. 

 Its natural beauties are many. In winter the park is inaccessible, due to the 

 heavy fall of snow; in the autumn the region is dry and parched; but in 

 June and July, when the rains come, the grasses grow and the flowers are in 

 full bloom. Then it is a beautiful country. 



