Before we left Colorado Springs, we spent some time visiting the Manitou Springs cliff dwellings. These structures were built about 700 years ago by the Anasazi Indians, also known as the “Ancient Ones” or the Puebloans. This is the most accessible and well preserved example of the cliff dwelling architecture. Next to the dwelling you can find a very nice museum and gift shop in a pueblo-style building built in the 1800’s. The alcove in the cliff in which the dwelling was built preserved it from the effects of the climate.

A 9 family structure

This structure housed 9 families.  What may look like windows was actually doing double-duty, both as doors and windows.  In New York City, they have the 5 story’s walk-ups, well I guess this would be a 3 story’s climb-up.  There’s evidence of ancient balcony between the floors.  Each family had a very small one room apartment with one opening in the front (there are no openings from one room to the other inside.  There were common areas to store grains and food supplies.

Structure with balcony intact on the left.

This entrance in marked with the sign of the clan

Chicken thinks that this is pretty darn cool!

The men would go gather rocks and they would shape them as they wanted, the space between the rocks was filled with clay and found objects.  Great care was taken during the construction, as shown in this picture, look how smooth the walls are and how straight the window/door opening is.

They lived on a diet composed mainly of corn.  They found many ways to cook it to make it less boring.  One way to make sweet corn bread was:   women chewed the cornmeal until the saliva  transformed the starches into sugar.  This paste was then  mixed with regular cornmeal and baked as a sweet corn bread.  Sounds delicious doesn’t it? 😉

After we left the dwellings, we went to Manitou Springs and had a delicious lunch at Adam’s Mountain Café.  We highly recommend it.