About 1,400 years ago, long before Europeans explored North America, a group of people living in the Four Corners region - where today Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet - chose what is now called Mesa Verde for their home. For more than 700 years they and their descendants lived and flourished here, eventually building elaborate stone communities in the sheltered alcoves of the canyon walls. Then, in the late A.D. 1200s, in the span of a generation or two, they disappeared.

Today on America’s National Parks, Mesa Verde, a spectacular reminder of this ancient culture - and so much more.