This is the only building original to the site, though it was moved about 200 yards.
Mountain Farm Museum near Cherokee, North Carolina,
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, May 6, 2009
(click on image for larger version)
Gallery: Great Smoky Mountains National Park
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Stanley Hotel Lobby, September 5, 2009, Estes Park, Colorado
Gallery: Estes Park and then up to Trail Ridge – September 5, 2009
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Lake Yellowstone Hotel is the oldest surviving hotel in Yellowstone National park and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The hotel is mentioned in the June 30,1894 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, “On this boat we took passage to the northern end of the lake near its outlet into the Yellowstone River. We here found a good hotel, the Lake House, where we stopped for the third night of our tour through the Park.”
An 1887 report to the Secretary of the Interior says, “The Lake House has one wing completed, and this is all that is need until the tide of travel sets more in that direction. It is one of the pleasantest, best kept hotels in the Park, and deserves more patronage than it has yet received. I regard it as the most desirable place in the Park for a prolonged stay.”
Gallery: Around the Lower Loop, September 15, 2007
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Continue reading about The Sunroom at Lake Yellowstone Hotel
Wolfe Ranch Cabin, September 24, 2007
The cabin was built in 1906 out of Fremont cottonwoods.
From Wikipedia:
The Wolfe Ranch, also known as Turnbow Cabin, is located in Arches National Park near Moab, Utah, U.S.
John Wesley Wolf settled in the location in 1888 with his oldest son Fred. A nagging leg injury from the Civil War prompted Wolf to move west from Ohio, looking for a drier climate. He chose this tract of more than 100 acres (0.40 km2) along Salt Wash for its water and grassland – enough for a few cattle. The Wolfes built a one-room cabin, a corral, and a small dam across Salt Wash. For more than a decade they lived alone on the remote ranch. In 1906, Wolf’s daughter Flora Stanley, her husband, and their children moved to the ranch. Shocked at the primitive conditions, Stanley convinced her father to build a new cabin with a wood floor.
The ranch on Salt Wash was established about that time under the Bar DX brand. With the arrival of Wolfe’s daughter and son-in-law in 1906, the newer, surviving structures were built. However, the Stanley family moved to Moab in 1908. The family sold the ranch in 1910 and returned to Ohio. John Wolfe died on October 22, 1913, in Etna, Ohio at the age of eighty-four.
Gallery: Arches National Park
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Cades Cove, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee
Gallery: Great Smoky Mountains National Park
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September 15, 2009 – Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado
On our last full day in Colorado, we toured the six-mile Mesa Top Loop Drive, visiting most of the archeological exhibits and overlooks.
Square Tower House cliff dwelling is named for the four-story-high structure standing against the curved back wall of the alcove. About 60 of the original 80 rooms of Square Tower House remain.
All of the cliff dwellings, including Square Tower House, were part of the final Mesa Verde building phase. People lived here between AD 1200 and 1300.
Small lizard on a ruin wall
After spending the morning among the ruins, we took a drive in the afternoon. At one point, we found ourselves on open range, with the road blocked by a herd of horses. As I very slowly eased the car forward, the horses parted and let us through.
Commentary and images from the road
image and information from September 15, 2009
This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About
Pithouse – For thousands of years, native peoples were living in the surrounding areas before coming to Mesa Verde. As with people all over the Southwest, Ancestral Puebloans lived in modest dwellings — shallow pits dug into the ground, covered with pole and mud roofs and walls, with entrances through the roofs.
In this excavation (above), what appears to be one pithouse is actually two. The larger one, built first, around AD 700, was destroyed by fire. The smaller one, which looks like an antechamber to a larger room, is actually a second pithouse built soon after the first one burned. It contains a new feature, a verticle ventilator shaft in one side, which appears in pithouses from then on — innovation!
Above is an Ancestral Puebloan kiva – an undeground religious room. The small circular hole in the floor is a sipapu, a symbolic entrance into the underworld – the Pueblo place of origin. This early kiva design was continued in the Mesa Verde villages and cliff dwellings.
Many fires have swept across Mesa Verde over time. Recent fires have exposed previously undiscovered Puebloan sites.
At our campsite on our final afternoon in
Colorado, 2009.
Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado — September 12, 2009
We arrived at Mesa Verde early enough to relax for a while before heading further into the park.
(click on any of the following photos to view a larger image.)
View of the sky over Mesa Verde National Park
It’s a mother-in-law warning device! (see previous post on it.) from display at Far View Visitor Center
Spruce Tree House was constructed between AD 1211 and 1278 by the ancestors of the Puebloan peoples of the Southwest. The dwelling contains about 130 rooms and 8 kivas (kee-vahs), or ceremonial chambers, built into a natural cave measuring 216 feet (66 meters) at greatest width and 89 feet (27 meters) at its greatest depth. It is thought to have been home for about 80 people.
Knife’s Edge, location of the old pre-1950s harrowing route into the park.
Evidence of past wild fires can be seen throughout the park, some quite recent.
Spruce Tree House is the third largest cliff dwelling at Mesa Verde. Unlike other cliff dwellings in the parks, Spruce Tree House can be accessed without a ranger guided tour, though rangers will be on duty at the ruin when the trail is open.
Spruce Tree House was opened for visitation following excavation by Dr. Jesse Walter Fewkes of the Smithsonian Institution. Dr. Fewkes removed the debris of fallen walls and roofs and stabilized the remaining walls.
It was discovered in 1888 by two local ranchers searching for stray cattle.
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Commentary and images from the road
image and information from September 12, 2009
This post is being simultaneously published
on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About
Spruce Tree House information is from National Park Service web page — Spruce Tree House
Mountain Farm Museum
near Cherokee, North Carolina
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee and North Carolina
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Great Smoky Mountains National Park images
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Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee and North Carolina
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Great Smoky Mountains National Park images
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Sentinel Meadows, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, September 12, 2007
The Yellowstone fires of 1988 together formed the largest wildfire in the recorded history of the U.S.’s Yellowstone National Park. Starting as many smaller individual fires, the flames spread quickly out of control with increasing winds and drought and combined into one large conflagration, which burned for several months. The fires almost destroyed two major visitor destinations and, on September 8, 1988, the entire park was closed to all non-emergency personnel for the first time in its history. Wikipedia
From the Yellowstone National Park, Madison Junction to West Thumb photo gallery
see other Haw Creek photo galleries
While looking for resource materials for the new Yellowstone National Park page that I am working on, I couldn’t find any footage on YouTube that shows the early days of tourism in the park. The Internet Archive site can be a good source for public domain material and is where I found the following video, which I uploaded to YouTube. It includes images of an early recreational vehicle — a trailer –, boiling an egg in a hot thermal pool, a man feeding a bear, Old Faithful geyser, and old Faithful Inn.
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