Manitou Cliff Dwellings

Manitou Cliff Dwellings in Manitou Springs is a constructed early twentieth-century attraction and museum designed to give visitors an accessible sense of Ancestral Puebloan dwelling places. Built with stonework taken from a collapsed prehistoric Pueblo site near Cortez, shipped by rail, and assembled in 1904, it opened in 1907 under the direction of Harold Ashenhurst and Virginia McClurg. Although Ancestral Puebloan peoples lived across the Four Corners and Northern Rio Grande from about 1200 B.C. to A.D. 1300, they did not permanently live at Manitou Springs. The site is significant chiefly as a controversial example of tourism, preservation, and popular interpretations of Native history coming together.

Manitou Springs, Colorado · United States