Unlike all the other national parks that were created to preserve natural beauty and wilderness, Mesa Verde was created to preserve some of the works of man, namely the Ancestral Puebloans who lived here over 700 years, from about 550AD to around 1300AD. The spectacular cliff dwellings were mainly built from the late 1190's to the late 1270's, but around 1300AD they were all abandoned. Most scholars who have studied this ancient civilization believe that the chief reasons for their abandonment were related to depletion of their natural resources - soils, forests, and animals. There are over 600 cliff dwellings in the park, but we concentrated our photography on the most spectacular of them all, the famous Cliff Palace. Although a few areas have been reconstructed, about 90% of Cliff Palace is in its natural state.