Despite the spring heat, the sandstone in Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Park is cool to the touch. Shards of black, gray, and clay-hued pottery rest on the ledge of what was once an active kiva, a subterranean room. Sections of its still-standing walls are charred black from fire.
This ancestral land deep in southwest Colorado was once occupied by the Ancient Puebloans and is now on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation and managed by the tribe. Communities of people lived, ate, and commingled beneath the canyon’s ledges, building their lives into the stone cliffs. Today, the Utes come to this area to gather willow branches and other flora for ceremonial purposes and act as guardians of the land, ensuring the sites are protected.
The park, established in 1972, safeguards and preserves 125,000 acres of historic Indigenous sites, which visitors can explore via guided hikes and vehicle tours. It’s only accessible to the public between mid-April and October, and visitors must be accompanied by a Ute guide. Only 30 people are permitted to visit per day.
Guests can choose between a leisurely half-day tour, where they’re driven to a handful of Ancestral Puebloan and Ute sites, or a more active full-day outing, which adds a three-mile hike on decently maintained trails and climbing at least four wooden ladders to visit ancient cliff dwellings. Specialty tours are also an option, to see more remote areas of the park and six additional archaeological sites, and a primitive campground is available for overnight stays.
“This is our land,” says Beverly Lehi-Yazzie, a Ute tribal member and one of the park’s guides. “That’s why we have tribal member guides—because it comes from the heart.”
Why this historic landscape is so restricted
It’s nearly a seven-hour drive from Denver to Cortez, the largest town in this desert-like swath of the state. Between the mesas and canyons, the land flattens out as though the Rocky Mountains were razed by a mower. Still, I nearly miss the sign alerting me to the park’s visitor center, a small stone building marked by a yellow gate.
Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Park sits across the highway. Its northeastern edge butts up against Mesa Verde National Park, which sees more than 500,000 visitors a year and celebrated its 120th anniversary in June 2026. The Tribal Park is twice the size and encompasses similar types of sites but has significantly less foot traffic.
Drive or hike to ancient cliff dwellings, accessed by climbing ladders.
Photo by Sipa USA/Alamy
“Due to the incredibly small visitation percentage, the park remains virtually untouched and unchanged from 100 and 150 years ago—maybe in some places several hundred years ago,” says Brian Bartlett, tourism director and CEO of Mesa Verde Country. “It becomes a keystone experience for this whole region.”
The Ancestral Puebloans occupied this area from about 500 to 1240 C.E. After they vacated, the Ute Mountain Utes settled on the land in the 1400s.
“It’s two different cultures in the same exact place at two different time periods,” says Gerald, my tour guide for the day and a member of the Ute Mountain Utes, one of two federally recognized tribes in Colorado. “About 80 percent of the Tribal Park hasn’t been discovered yet, and only 15 percent of what has been discovered is accessible.”
That includes historic Ute camps and pictographs and four Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings, which were built in the mid-1100s. The largest, Lion House, has 46 rooms and 7 kivas, although experts estimate there once could have been upwards of 80 rooms.
Only a handful of tribal members offer these tours. It’s still considered by some to be taboo to explore the sites. Gerald, whose great-grandmother was born in the canyon, sees it differently: “What I am sharing with you, the culture and the history,” he says, “it’s American history.”
Walk around a living museum and touch pieces of history
That history becomes tangible within the Tribal Park, a sort of living museum that can be explored with many of your senses. I’m allowed to touch the red paint on a series of pictographs—a person on horseback, two women carrying babies—made by Ute Chief Jack House, the visionary behind the park and the tribe’s last traditional chief. I also pick up bits of red pottery and basalt before placing them back down precisely where I found them. Visitors are encouraged to physically interact with artifacts, to connect to the place and people who made these items, as long as they do so respectfully and don’t remove any items.
Chief House met some resistance from locals as he worked to open the landscape to visitors. He aimed to gain protective status to preserve the sites and offer a revenue stream and job opportunities for the community. “The fear was that we were creating another Mesa Verde National Park,” which was created by taking Ute land out of tribal control, Gerald says. In contrast, in this tribal park, visitation is limited and a Ute guide must accompany anyone who enters.
When we reach the top of Lion Canyon, Gerald and I hop out of the van we’ve been riding in (visitors can opt to drive with their guides in a park vehicle or follow along in their own cars) and set out on foot. We climb down a series of ladders to explore the quartet of cliff dwellings. I run my fingers along the rough, centuries-old wood roofing beams and observe the dried-out, finger-size cobs of corn grown for sustenance. I spot ancient handprints in white paint. When we walk between the sites, we follow a widened version of the original pathway used by the Ancestral Puebloans.
The quiet is a defining characteristic of this place, as is the lack of other visitors. Our footsteps are interrupted only by birdsong and the whoosh of wind sweeping through the piñon pines. We walk just 3.5 miles, but it’s enough to take us back 800 years.
Tours are available Wednesdays throughout Saturdays and can be booked by emailing [email protected] or calling 970-565-9653. Half-day tours start at $40 per person, full-day outings at $50 per person. Specialty tours are also available. For $18 per person, you can leave the driving to your guide and ride along in a park vehicle.
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