Mesa Verde's largest cliff dwelling holds roughly one hundred and fifty rooms, and tree-ring evidence points to a specific multi-decade drought as the reason its builders eventually left.
The largest dwelling on the mesa
Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling at Mesa Verde and in North America generally, contains around one hundred and fifty rooms and more than twenty kivas, circular ceremonial chambers, built into a natural alcove in the canyon wall, representing a substantial, densely organised community rather than a small or temporary settlement.
What tree rings show about why people left
Dendrochronological analysis of timber used in construction across the region has identified a severe, sustained drought during the late thirteenth century, sometimes called the Great Drought, as coinciding closely with the depopulation of Mesa Verde's cliff dwellings, giving climate stress substantial explanatory weight alongside other proposed factors such as resource depletion and social conflict.
As this entry's companion article covers
The continuity between the site's Ancestral Puebloan builders and the modern Pueblo communities of the American Southwest who trace direct cultural and, in many cases, ancestral descent from them is addressed directly in this entry's companion article rather than repeated here.