Mesa Verde’s fans dwell on birthday plans By Electa Draper, Denver Post Staff Writer

Mesa Verde is seeing tough times: Tight federal budget for national parks, regionwide tourism declines and park-closing wildfires that have consumed much of the piñon-juniper forest, half of Mesa Verde’s 52,000 acres, since 1996. Visitor numbers dropped from a mid-1990s spike of more than 700,000 to last year’s 450,000. …

The ruins in the nation’s premier archaeological preserve are from centuries to more than a millennium old. The park itself is still a whippersnapper, turning only 100 on June 29, 2006. …

This park, which preserves the remnants of the Anasazi, also known as the Ancestral Puebloans, is officially an international treasure. The United Nations has declared it a World Heritage Site. National Geographic deemed it one of ”50 places of a lifetime – the world’s greatest destinations” in a special travel edition at the turn of this century.

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