Manitou Springs, Colorado: Manitou Cliff Dwellings

The Manitou Cliff Dwellings ARE real. They were "rescued" by a Colorado College Archaeological Class (CC is in nearby Colorado Springs) around 1905 from a site that was about to be flooded. I'm sure they have been stabilized (and possibly enhanced), but they were built by the Anasazi.

While I agree with many of your points (the museum is better than the actual ruins; the gift shop sells some nice Native American-made objects), I think it's a disservice to list the "fakery" tip as the first update. It is (IMHO) a nice little "roadside attraction" that will educate you and your kids...and you surely can't climb about on the ruins at Mesa Verde!

Only portions of these dwellings were moved here. Native Americans have lived in this area long before European history starts to account for. Many tribes had used the site as a sacred gathering place for hundreds of years, but if you started to tell the truth they might want it back.

The Manitou Cliff Dwellings are not fakes; they were actually relocated from the Mesa Verde area after the turn of the century by Manitou businessman William Crosby. The stones were labeled and photographed and reconstructed in their present location with the assistance of archaeologists. The cliff dwellings are authentic, although they were originally located in Mesa Verde.

Re: the Manitou Cliff Dwellings. They are total fakes. Here's why. When Mesa Verde was made a National Park in 1906, Colorado Springs got mad. They wanted the state to have it. So they built their copies. They are total rip-offs of the actual Indian dwellings at Mesa Verde -- such as the round tower, etc. and tried to pass them off as real. Over the years the lies got bigger with plains Indians -- not Puebloan -- saying their ancestors built and lived in them. Maybe they did but after 1906. Do not believe any of it -- it is Colorado bushway.

I found some additional information about the authenticity of the buildings in the Manitou Cliff Dwellings Museum. Apparently they're even worse than reproductions -- they're reproductions mixed with looted, reconstructed ruins. I'm looking right now at a promotional booklet put out by the Manitou Cliff Dwellings Company circa 1925. This is their own description:

Portions of the Spruce Tree House, the pictureque Cliff Palace and the far-famed Balcony House as originally built in the Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado, have been here constructed at great expense. Careful measurements, plans and photographs of those ruins were made by the best architects and engineers; other Cliff Dwellings, built on private land, were then acquired and the walls of these ruins carefully taken down and the original stones shipped to Manitou, where exact reconstructions of the above named ruins were set up.

The booklet also states at the end:

Only the ignorant or malicious minded will tell you that a visit to these Ruins is not worth while because the prehistoric Cliff Dwellers did not build them here personally!

These citations are from: Ancient Cliff Dwellings. Phantom Cliff Canon, Manitou Colo. (Colorado Springs, Colo.: Manitou Cliff Dwellings Company, ca. 1925).