Manitou Springs, Colorado: Manitou Cliff Dwellings

An imitation cliff dwelling, built in 1907 from pieces of a pueblo -- not a cliff dwelling -- cannibalized from elsewhere in the state.

Spent quite a bit of time looking around and exploring every inch of the cliff dwellings, as well as the gift shop and museum. What a gem to find! Had a great time learning and seeing everything.

Get there before noon and enjoy a less crowded area. Very educational and fun for children to climb in the dwellings.

We drove up to the entrance of this place and the dwellings appeared to be "fake" even from a distance. I asked the lady at the gate if they had been reconstructed and she said "Yes."

A few days later we were visiting the Royal Gorge when we met a ranger coming home from his duty at Mesa Verde. He explained to us that there had been a lady who owned property adjacent to Mesa Verde who was concerned that the Park was interested in expanding its boundaries to include the historic dwelling on her property. They were unable to come to terms on purchasing her property, and she decided to sell the dwellings rather than having them condemned by the government at their "suggested" value.

Unfortunately, these are not as authentic as suggested in the first entry. The stones were taken from a collapsed Anasazi site in southwest Colorado, shipped to the present location, and assembled to look like Anasazi-style buildings, some of which are believed to be replicas of buildings in Mesa Verde National Park. I also seem to remember that only a small percentage of the stones were original, and the rest of the walls were fabricated.

Personally, I felt cheated when I went there and felt like it was anything but authentic.