As you look at Cliff Palace today, it is difficult to see it as it was when it was alive. Many of the walls have fallen and only small bits of masonry remain as indications of houses that once were there. Rebuild these walls in your imagination and then, most important of all, place flat adobe roofs on the houses. Now see how it has changed! It is no longer a ruin—it has become a terraced apartment house, fitted into the sheltering cave. The more than 200 rooms rise in at least eight levels from the front of the cave to the high structures in the rear.

As your imagination restores the village to its original condition the people begin to appear. Since it is evening all of them have returned to the security of their cave home. The men have come back from the fields and from the hunt. The women have returned from their search for roots and berries and the girls have made their last trip to the springs, returning with jars of water balanced on their heads. The children, urged by the calls of their mothers, have ended their play in the canyon and on the cliffs and returned to their homes. Only the dogs and turkeys are outside the village: they are searching for scraps of food on the great trash pile below the cave.

As the shadows lengthen the 300 or 400 inhabitants are safe within the shelter of their fortress-like village. Cooking fires have been kindled and columns of smoke drift lazily up the cliff and into the sky. The odors of corn bread and stewing or roasting meat rise on the evening air and soon the people separate into many small family groups for the evening meal. Now it is quiet: only the murmur of low voices rises from the cave. The day’s activities are over and the happy, contented people are ready for the night.

If you would like really to see the people, scroll down.