The Manitou Cliff Dwellings
Near Manitou Springs, Colorado
Just northwest of downtown, set into a sandstone alcove, stand a cluster of Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings. But these stones did not originate here. They were moved.
Around nineteen hundred four, a woman named Virginia McClurg, founder of the Colorado Cliff Dwellings Association, launched a project to relocate a portion of ancient dwellings from the far southwestern corner of Colorado, near Mesa Verde and the town of Cortez, up to Manitou Springs. Her stated goal was preservation of ruins she felt were at risk. Over several years the stones were collected, packed, shipped by railroad to Manitou Springs.
Workers reassembled them into cliff dwellings modeled on those at Mesa Verde. The attraction opened to the public in nineteen hundred seven. The relocation remains controversial to this day.
Many Indigenous people view it critically, seeing sacred structures torn from their landscape and cultural context and turned into a roadside tourist attraction. It is best understood not as an untouched ruin but as an early, well-meaning, and much-debated act of salvage and reconstruction.
