title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: It was not until he was seventeen that he showed any taste for mathematics – his interest in the subject being first excited by a paper by Edmond Halley from 1693


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: which he came across by accident. Alone and unaided he threw himself into mathematical studies; at the end of a year's incessant toil he was already an accomplished mathematician. Charles Emmanuel III appointed Lagrange to serve as the "Sostituto del Maestro di Matematica" (mathematics assistant professor) at the Royal Military Academy of the Theory and Practice of Artillery in 1755, where he taught courses in calculus and mechanics to support the Piedmontese army's early adoption of the ballistics theories of Benjamin Robins and Leonhard Euler. In that capacity, Lagrange was the first to teach calculus in an engineering school. According to , the academy's military commander and famous artillery theorist, Lagrange unfortunately proved to be a problematic professor with his oblivious teaching style, abstract reasoning, and impatience with artillery and fortification-engineering applications. In this academy one of his students was François Daviet.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: Lagrange is one of the founders of the calculus of variations. Starting in 1754, he worked on the problem of the tautochrone, discovering a method of maximizing and minimizing functionals in a way similar to finding extrema of functions. Lagrange wrote several letters to Leonhard Euler between 1754 and 1756 describing his results. He outlined his "δ-algorithm", leading to the Euler–Lagrange equations of variational calculus and considerably simplifying Euler's earlier analysis. Lagrange also applied his ideas to problems of classical mechanics, generalising the results of Euler and Maupertuis.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: Euler was very impressed with Lagrange's results. It has been stated that "with characteristic courtesy he withheld a paper he had previously written, which covered some of the same ground, in order that the young Italian might have time to complete his work, and claim the undisputed invention of the new calculus"; however, this chivalric view has been disputed. Lagrange published his method in two memoirs of the Turin Society in 1762 and 1773.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: In 1758, with the aid of his pupils (mainly with Daviet), Lagrange established a society, which was subsequently incorporated as the Turin Academy of Sciences, and most of his early writings are to be found in the five volumes of its transactions, usually known as the "Miscellanea Taurinensia". Many of these are elaborate papers. The first volume contains a paper on the theory of the propagation of sound; in this he indicates a mistake made by Newton, obtains the general differential equation for the motion, and integrates it for motion in a straight line. This volume also contains the complete solution of the problem of a string vibrating transversely; in this paper he points out a lack of generality in the solutions previously given by Brook Taylor, D'Alembert, and Euler, and arrives at the conclusion that the form of the curve at any time "t" is given by the equation formula_1. The article concludes with a masterly discussion of echoes, beats, and compound sounds. Other articles in this volume are on recurring series, probabilities, and the calculus of variations.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: The second volume contains a long paper embodying the results of several papers in the first volume on the theory and notation of the calculus of variations; and he illustrates its use by deducing the principle of least action, and by solutions of various problems in dynamics.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: The third volume includes the solution of several dynamical problems by means of the calculus of variations; some papers on the integral calculus; a solution of a Fermat's problem: given an integer which is not a perfect square, to find a number such that is a perfect square; and the general differential equations of motion for three bodies moving under their mutual attractions.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: The next work he produced was in 1764 on the libration of the Moon, and an explanation as to why the same face was always turned to the earth, a problem which he treated by the aid of virtual work. His solution is especially interesting as containing the germ of the idea of generalised equations of motion, equations which he first formally proved in 1780.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: Already by 1756, Euler and Maupertuis, seeing Lagrange's mathematical talent, tried to persuade Lagrange to come to Berlin, but he shyly refused the offer. In 1765, d'Alembert interceded on Lagrange's behalf with Frederick of Prussia and by letter, asked him to leave Turin for a considerably more prestigious position in Berlin. He again turned down the offer, responding that


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: In 1766, after Euler left Berlin for Saint Petersburg, Frederick himself wrote to Lagrange expressing the wish of "the greatest king in Europe" to have "the greatest mathematician in Europe" resident at his court. Lagrange was finally persuaded. He spent the next twenty years in Prussia, where he produced a long series of papers published in the Berlin and Turin transactions, and composed his monumental work, the "Mécanique analytique". In 1767, he married his cousin Vittoria Conti.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: Lagrange was a favourite of the king, who frequently lectured him on the advantages of perfect regularity of life. The lesson was accepted, and Lagrange studied his mind and body as though they were machines, and experimented to find the exact amount of work which he could do before exhaustion. Every night he set himself a definite task for the next day, and on completing any branch of a subject he wrote a short analysis to see what points in the demonstrations or in the subject-matter were capable of improvement. He carefully planned his papers before writing them, usually without a single erasure or correction.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: Nonetheless, during his years in Berlin, Lagrange's health was rather poor, and that of his wife Vittoria was even worse. She died in 1783 after years of illness and Lagrange was very depressed. In 1786, Frederick II died, and the climate of Berlin became difficult for Lagrange.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: In 1786, following Frederick's death, Lagrange received similar invitations from states including Spain and Naples, and he accepted the offer of Louis XVI to move to Paris. In France he was received with every mark of distinction and special apartments in the Louvre were prepared for his reception, and he became a member of the French Academy of Sciences, which later became part of the Institut de France (1795). At the beginning of his residence in Paris he was seized with an attack of melancholy, and even the printed copy of his "Mécanique" on which he had worked for a quarter of a century lay for more than two years unopened on his desk. Curiosity as to the results of the French revolution first stirred him out of his lethargy, a curiosity which soon turned to alarm as the revolution developed.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: It was about the same time, 1792, that the unaccountable sadness of his life and his timidity moved the compassion of 24-year-old Renée-Françoise-Adélaïde Le Monnier, daughter of his friend, the astronomer Pierre Charles Le Monnier. She insisted on marrying him, and proved a devoted wife to whom he became warmly attached.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: In September 1793, the Reign of Terror began. Under intervention of Antoine Lavoisier, who himself was by then already thrown out of the academy along with many other scholars, Lagrange was specifically exempted by name in the decree of October 1793 that ordered all foreigners to leave France. On 4 May 1794, Lavoisier and 27 other tax farmers were arrested and sentenced to death and guillotined on the afternoon after the trial. Lagrange said on the death of Lavoisier:


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: Though Lagrange had been preparing to escape from France while there was yet time, he was never in any danger; different revolutionary governments (and at a later time, Napoleon) gave him honours and distinctions. This luckiness or safety may to some extent be due to his life attitude he expressed many years before: ""I believe that, in general, one of the first principles of every wise man is to conform strictly to the laws of the country in which he is living, even when they are unreasonable"". A striking testimony to the respect in which he was held was shown in 1796 when the French commissary in Italy was ordered to attend in full state on Lagrange's father, and tender the congratulations of the republic on the achievements of his son, who "had done honor to all mankind by his genius, and whom it was the special glory of Piedmont to have produced." It may be added that Napoleon, when he attained power, warmly encouraged scientific studies in France, and was a liberal benefactor of them. Appointed senator in 1799, he was the first signer of the Sénatus-consulte which in 1802 annexed his fatherland Piedmont to France. He acquired French citizenship in consequence. The French claimed he was a French mathematician, but the Italians continued to claim him as Italian."


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: Lagrange was involved in the development of the metric system of measurement in the 1790s. He was offered the presidency of the Commission for the reform of weights and measures ("la Commission des Poids et Mesures") when he was preparing to escape. After Lavoisier's death in 1794, it was largely Lagrange who influenced the choice of the metre and kilogram units with decimal subdivision, by the commission of 1799. Lagrange was also one of the founding members of the Bureau des Longitudes in 1795.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: In 1795, Lagrange was appointed to a mathematical chair at the newly established École Normale, which enjoyed only a short existence of four months. His lectures there were elementary; they contain nothing of any mathematical importance, though they do provide a brief historical insight into his reason for proposing undecimal or Base 11 as the base number for the reformed system of weights and measures. The lectures were published because the professors had to "pledge themselves to the representatives of the people and to each other neither to read nor to repeat from memory" ["Les professeurs aux Écoles Normales ont pris, avec les Représentans du Peuple, et entr'eux l'engagement de ne point lire ou débiter de mémoire des discours écrits"]. The discourses were ordered taken down in shorthand to enable the deputies to see how the professors acquitted themselves. It was also thought the published lectures would interest a significant portion of the citizenry ["Quoique des feuilles sténographiques soient essentiellement destinées aux élèves de l'École Normale, on doit prévoir quיelles seront lues par une grande partie de la Nation"].


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: In 1794, Lagrange was appointed professor of the École Polytechnique; and his lectures there, described by mathematicians who had the good fortune to be able to attend them, were almost perfect both in form and matter. Beginning with the merest elements, he led his hearers on until, almost unknown to themselves, they were themselves extending the bounds of the subject: above all he impressed on his pupils the advantage of always using general methods expressed in a symmetrical notation.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: But Lagrange does not seem to have been a successful teacher. Fourier, who attended his lectures in 1795, wrote:


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: In 1810, Lagrange started a thorough revision of the "Mécanique analytique", but he was able to complete only about two-thirds of it before his death at Paris in 1813, in 128 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Napoleon honoured him with the Grand Croix of the Ordre Impérial de la Réunion just two days before he died. He was buried that same year in the Panthéon in Paris. The inscription on his tomb reads in translation:JOSEPH LOUIS LAGRANGE. Senator. Count of the Empire. Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour. Grand Cross of the Imperial Order of the Reunion. Member of the Institute and the Bureau of Longitude. Born in Turin on 25 January 1736. Died in Paris on 10 April 1813.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: Lagrange was extremely active scientifically during twenty years he spent in Berlin. Not only did he produce his "Mécanique analytique", but he contributed between one and two hundred papers to the Academy of Turin, the Berlin Academy, and the French Academy. Some of these are really treatises, and all without exception are of a high order of excellence. Except for a short time when he was ill he produced on average about one paper a month. Of these, note the following as amongst the most important.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: First, his contributions to the fourth and fifth volumes, 1766–1773, of the "Miscellanea Taurinensia"; of which the most important was the one in 1771, in which he discussed how numerous astronomical observations should be combined so as to give the most probable result. And later, his contributions to the first two volumes, 1784–1785, of the transactions of the Turin Academy; to the first of which he contributed a paper on the pressure exerted by fluids in motion, and to the second an article on integration by infinite series, and the kind of problems for which it is suitable.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: Most of the papers sent to Paris were on astronomical questions, and among these including his paper on the Jovian system in 1766, his essay on the problem of three bodies in 1772, his work on the secular equation of the Moon in 1773, and his treatise on cometary perturbations in 1778. These were all written on subjects proposed by the Académie française, and in each case the prize was awarded to him.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: Between 1772 and 1788, Lagrange re-formulated Classical/Newtonian mechanics to simplify formulas and ease calculations. These mechanics are called Lagrangian mechanics.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: The greater number of his papers during this time were, however, contributed to the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Several of them deal with questions in algebra.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: There are also numerous articles on various points of analytical geometry. In two of them, written rather later, in 1792 and 1793, he reduced the equations of the quadrics (or conicoids) to their canonical forms.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: During the years from 1772 to 1785, he contributed a long series of papers which created the science of partial differential equations. A large part of these results was collected in the second edition of Euler's integral calculus which was published in 1794.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: Lastly, there are numerous papers on problems in astronomy. Of these the most important are the following:


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: Over and above these various papers he composed his fundamental treatise, the "Mécanique analytique".


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: In this book, he lays down the law of virtual work, and from that one fundamental principle, by the aid of the calculus of variations, deduces the whole of mechanics, both of solids and fluids.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: The object of the book is to show that the subject is implicitly included in a single principle, and to give general formulae from which any particular result can be obtained. The method of generalised co-ordinates by which he obtained this result is perhaps the most brilliant result of his analysis. Instead of following the motion of each individual part of a material system, as D'Alembert and Euler had done, he showed that, if we determine its configuration by a sufficient number of variables "x", called generalized coordinates, whose number is the same as that of the degrees of freedom possessed by the system, then the kinetic and potential energies of the system can be expressed in terms of those variables, and the differential equations of motion thence deduced by simple differentiation. For example, in dynamics of a rigid system he replaces the consideration of the particular problem by the general equation, which is now usually written in the form


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: He then presented what we now know as the method of Lagrange multipliers—though this is not the first time that method was published—as a means to solve this equation.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: Amongst other minor theorems here given it may suffice to mention the proposition that the kinetic energy imparted by the given impulses to a material system under given constraints is a maximum, and the principle of least action. All the analysis is so elegant that Sir William Rowan Hamilton said the work could be described only as a scientific poem. Lagrange remarked that mechanics was really a branch of pure mathematics analogous to a geometry of four dimensions, namely, the time and the three coordinates of the point in space; and it is said that he prided himself that from the beginning to the end of the work there was not a single diagram. At first no printer could be found who would publish the book; but Legendre at last persuaded a Paris firm to undertake it, and it was issued under the supervision of Laplace, Cousin, Legendre (editor) and Condorcet in 1788.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: Lagrange's lectures on the differential calculus at École Polytechnique form the basis of his treatise "Théorie des fonctions analytiques", which was published in 1797. This work is the extension of an idea contained in a paper he had sent to the Berlin papers in 1772, and its object is to substitute for the differential calculus a group of theorems based on the development of algebraic functions in series, relying in particular on the principle of the generality of algebra.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: A somewhat similar method had been previously used by John Landen in the "Residual Analysis", published in London in 1758. Lagrange believed that he could thus get rid of those difficulties, connected with the use of infinitely large and infinitely small quantities, to which philosophers objected in the usual treatment of the differential calculus. The book is divided into three parts: of these, the first treats of the general theory of functions, and gives an algebraic proof of Taylor's theorem, the validity of which is, however, open to question; the second deals with applications to geometry; and the third with applications to mechanics.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: Another treatise on the same lines was his "Leçons sur le calcul des fonctions", issued in 1804, with the second edition in 1806. It is in this book that Lagrange formulated his celebrated method of Lagrange multipliers, in the context of problems of variational calculus with integral constraints. These works devoted to differential calculus and calculus of variations may be considered as the starting point for the researches of Cauchy, Jacobi, and Weierstrass.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: At a later period Lagrange fully embraced the use of infinitesimals in preference to founding the differential calculus on the study of algebraic forms; and in the preface to the second edition of the "Mécanique Analytique", which was issued in 1811, he justifies the employment of infinitesimals, and concludes by saying that:


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: His "Résolution des équations numériques", published in 1798, was also the fruit of his lectures at École Polytechnique. There he gives the method of approximating to the real roots of an equation by means of continued fractions, and enunciates several other theorems. In a note at the end he shows how Fermat's little theorem, that is


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: where "p" is a prime and "a" is prime to "p", may be applied to give the complete algebraic solution of any binomial equation. He also here explains how the equation whose roots are the squares of the differences of the roots of the original equation may be used so as to give considerable information as to the position and nature of those roots.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: The theory of the planetary motions had formed the subject of some of the most remarkable of Lagrange's Berlin papers. In 1806 the subject was reopened by Poisson, who, in a paper read before the French Academy, showed that Lagrange's formulae led to certain limits for the stability of the orbits. Lagrange, who was present, now discussed the whole subject afresh, and in a letter communicated to the academy in 1808 explained how, by the variation of arbitrary constants, the periodical and secular inequalities of any system of mutually interacting bodies could be determined.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: Euler proposed Lagrange for election to the Berlin Academy and he was elected on 2 September 1756. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1790, a Fellow of the Royal Society and a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1806. In 1808, Napoleon made Lagrange a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour and a Count of the Empire. He was awarded the Grand Croix of the Ordre Impérial de la Réunion in 1813, a week before his death in Paris, and was buried in the Panthéon, a mausoleum dedicated to the most honoured French people.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: Lagrange was awarded the 1764 prize of the French Academy of Sciences for his memoir on the libration of the Moon. In 1766 the academy proposed a problem of the motion of the satellites of Jupiter, and the prize again was awarded to Lagrange. He also shared or won the prizes of 1772, 1774, and 1778.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: Lagrange is one of the 72 prominent French scientists who were commemorated on plaques at the first stage of the Eiffel Tower when it first opened. "Rue Lagrange" in the 5th Arrondissement in Paris is named after him. In Turin, the street where the house of his birth still stands is named "via Lagrange". The lunar crater Lagrange and the asteroid 1006 Lagrangea also bear his name.


title: Joseph-Louis Lagrange

text: The initial version of this article was taken from the public domain resource "A Short Account of the History of Mathematics" (4th edition, 1908) by W. W. Rouse Ball.


title: Barret Oliver

text: Barret Spencer Oliver (born August 24, 1973) is an American photographer and a former child actor. He is best known for his role as Bastian Balthazar Bux in the film adaptation of Michael Ende's novel "The Neverending Story", followed by roles in "D.A.R.Y.L.", "Cocoon", and "".


title: Barret Oliver

text: Oliver had minor roles in television and film, until starring as Bastian in the 1984 movie "The NeverEnding Story". Subsequently, he was cast as the lead in Tim Burton's short film "Frankenweenie" and as the cyborg "Daryl" in the 1985 film "D.A.R.Y.L.", a part for which he won a Saturn Award.


title: Barret Oliver

text: His last role in a feature film was Willie Saravian in Paul Bartel's 1989 ensemble comedy "Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills".


title: Barret Oliver

text: Later Oliver became a printer and photographer, specializing in nineteenth-century processes such as collodion and Woodburytype. His work has been displayed in museum and gallery exhibitions and used in films. In 2007, his book "A History of the Woodburytype" was published by Carl Mautz Publishing.


title: The Axis of Awesome

text: The Axis of Awesome was an Australian comedy music act with members Jordan Raskopoulos, Lee Naimo and Benny Davis, that performed from 2006 to 2018. The trio covered a wide variety of performance styles, and perform a combination of original material and pop parodies.


title: The Axis of Awesome

text: The Axis of Awesome formed in 2006, their name being a play on the phrase "axis of evil" used by United States President George W. Bush. The trio were heavily involved in improv theatre at the University of Sydney and decided to try something different. The band played at a few stand-up comedy nights and improv events in Sydney and performed a fortnightly segment on FBi Radio, but got their first big break when they released a number of rap parodies lampooning the 2007 Australian Federal Election.


title: The Axis of Awesome

text: The band gained further success performing in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and making television and radio appearances. Their 2008 Melbourne International Comedy Festival show, titled "The Axis of Awesome Comeback Spectacular", received a Moosehead Award. They took the show to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2008 where it was received with critical and audience acclaim.


title: The Axis of Awesome

text: After the Edinburgh festival, the Axis of Awesome's song "4 Chords", a medley of 36 pop songs that all contain the same basic chord structure, received airplay on BBC Radio 1. This airplay drove listeners to the internet and "4 Chords" went viral, receiving millions of views on YouTube. The success on YouTube prompted increased interest, both home and abroad, and the Axis performed the song on many radio and television programs, including Nova 96.9, Triple M, "The Footy Show", "Good News Week" and "9am with David & Kim".


title: The Axis of Awesome

text: In April 2009, the Axis of Awesome performed at The Melbourne International Comedy Festival with a new show, The Axis of Awesome vs Bee. The show wove the band's songs into a narrative involving a giant bee. The Axis of Awesome vs Bee was also performed at the Sydney Comedy Festival (formerly The Cracker Comedy Festival) in May 2009.


title: The Axis of Awesome

text: The Axis toured regional Queensland and New South Wales as part of The Melbourne Comedy festival roadshow and performed at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival in May and June. They returned to The Edinburgh fringe in August with a new sell-out show "The Axis of Awesome: Infinity Rock Explosion" and appeared at the World's Funniest Island festival in Sydney in October.


title: The Axis of Awesome

text: In February 2010, the Axis of Awesome released their second album "Infinity Rock Explosion!" and performed sold out seasons at The Adelaide Fringe Festival, The Melbourne International Comedy Festival, The Sydney Comedy Festival and The Singapore Flipside Festival. They received The Time Out award for best local talent at the Sydney comedy festival and recorded their first DVD, "The Axis of Awesome Live" which was released in Australia on 6 October 2010 by Punchline and Beyond Entertainment.


title: The Axis of Awesome

text: They returned to the Edinburgh Festival again in 2014 with their new show "Viva La Vida Loca Las Vegas".


title: The Axis of Awesome

text: In February 2016, Jordan publicly came out as transgender. She was pleasantly surprised by the "overwhelmingly positive" public reaction. Their album released that year, "Viva La Vida Loca Las Vegas", features a cover of "Transgender Dysphoria Blues" by Against Me!.


title: The Axis of Awesome

text: In August 2018, the band announced on Facebook that they would no longer be performing together as The Axis of Awesome. In 2020 Jordan explained, through a YouTube video, that the band had originally decided to take a break, and that break had become permanent. She explained that she still wished the band were together performing, but people grow and change over time and a decade together is a long time.


title: The Axis of Awesome

text: "Four Chords" is the Axis of Awesome's best-known work. It is a medley of popular songs, set to the I–V–vi–IV progression. Many of the songs selected do not actually follow this four-chord progression, and some of the ones that do only include it briefly. Since these four chords are played as an ostinato, the band also uses a vi–IV–I–V, usually from the song "Save Tonight" to the song "Torn". The band plays the song in the key of D (E in the live performances on YouTube), so the progression they use is D–A–Bm–G (E, B, C#m, A on the live performances). Most of the songs have been transposed from their original keys.


title: The Axis of Awesome

text: The band continually vary the songs comprising the medley, often incorporating new releases. The Axis' song "Birdplane" (itself a parody of the Five for Fighting song "Superman") is always included, as well as Australian folk song "Waltzing Matilda" and "Down Under" by the Australian band Men at Work. The medley usually starts with Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'". The song always concludes with the chorus of "Scar" (by Missy Higgins), except with the final line changed from "Could you leave me with a scar?" to "That's all it takes to be a star" (referring to the four chords themselves).


title: The Axis of Awesome

text: On 20 July 2011, the Axis of Awesome released an official music video for "Four Chords" on their YouTube channel.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Mesa Verde National Park is an American national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado. The park protects some of the best-preserved Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites in the United States.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Established by Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, the park occupies near the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. With more than 5,000 sites, including 600 cliff dwellings, it is the largest archaeological preserve in the United States. Mesa Verde (Spanish for "green table", or more specifically "green table mountain") is best known for structures such as Cliff Palace, thought to be the largest cliff dwelling in North America.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Starting BC Mesa Verde was seasonally inhabited by a group of nomadic Paleo-Indians known as the Foothills Mountain Complex. The variety of projectile points found in the region indicates they were influenced by surrounding areas, including the Great Basin, the San Juan Basin, and the Rio Grande Valley. Later, Archaic people established semi-permanent rock shelters in and around the mesa. By 1000 BC, the Basketmaker culture emerged from the local Archaic population, and by 750 AD the Ancestral Puebloans had developed from the Basketmaker culture.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: The Pueblonians survived using a combination of hunting, gathering, and subsistence farming of crops such as corn, beans, and squash. They built the mesa's first pueblos sometime after 650, and by the end of the 12th century, they began to construct the massive cliff dwellings for which the park is best known. By 1285, following a period of social and environmental instability driven by a series of severe and prolonged droughts, they abandoned the area and moved south to locations in Arizona and New Mexico, including the Rio Chama, the Albuquerque Basin, the Pajarito Plateau, and the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: The first occupants of the Mesa Verde region, which spans from southeastern Utah to northwestern New Mexico, were nomadic Paleo-Indians who arrived in the area BC. They followed herds of big game and camped near rivers and streams, many of which dried up as the glaciers that once covered parts of the San Juan Mountains receded. The earliest Paleo-Indians were the Clovis culture and Folsom tradition, defined largely by how they fashioned projectile points. Although they left evidence of their presence throughout the region, there is little indication that they lived in central Mesa Verde during this time.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: After 9600 BC, the area's environment grew warmer and drier, a change that brought to central Mesa Verde pine forests and the animals that thrive in them. Paleo-Indians began inhabiting the mesa in increasing numbers , though it is unclear whether they were seasonal occupants or year-round residents. Development of the atlatl during this period made it easier for them to hunt smaller game, a crucial advance at a time when most of the region's big game had disappeared from the landscape.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: 6000 BC marks the beginning of the Archaic period in North America. Archaeologists differ as to the origin of the Mesa Verde Archaic population; some believe they developed exclusively from local Paleo-Indians, called the Foothills Mountain Complex, but others suggest that the variety of projectile points found in Mesa Verde indicates influence from surrounding areas, including the Great Basin, the San Juan Basin, and the Rio Grande Valley. The Archaic people probably developed locally, but were also influenced by contact, trade, and intermarriage with immigrants from these outlying areas.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: The early Archaic people living near Mesa Verde utilized the atlatl and harvested a wider variety of plants and animals than the Paleo-Indians had while retaining their primarily nomadic lifestyle. They inhabited the outlying areas of the Mesa Verde region, but also the mountains, mesa tops, and canyons, where they created rock shelters and rock art, and left evidence of animal processing and chert knapping. Environmental stability during the period drove population expansion and migration. Major warming and drying from 5000 to 2500 might have led middle Archaic people to seek the cooler climate of Mesa Verde, whose higher elevation brought increased snowpack that, when coupled with spring rains, provided relatively plentiful amounts of water.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: By the late Archaic, more people were living in semi-permanent rock shelters that preserved perishable goods such as baskets, sandals, and mats. They started to make a variety of twig figurines that usually resembled sheep or deer. The late Archaic is marked by increased trade in exotic materials such as obsidian and turquoise. Marine shells and abalone from the Pacific coast made their way to Mesa Verde from Arizona, and the Archaic people worked them into necklaces and pendants. Rock art flourished, and people lived in rudimentary houses made of mud and wood. Their early attempts at plant domestication eventually developed into the sustained agriculture that marked the end of the Archaic period, .


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: With the introduction of corn to the Mesa Verde region BC and the trend away from nomadism toward permanent pithouse settlements, the Archaic Pueblonians transitioned into what archaeologists call the Basketmaker culture. Basketmaker II people are characterized by their combination of foraging and farming skills, use of the atlatl, and creation of finely woven baskets in the absence of earthen pottery. By 300, corn had become the preeminent staple of the Basketmaker II people's diet, which relied less and less on wild food sources and more on domesticated crops.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: In addition to the fine basketry for which they were named, Basketmaker II people fashioned a variety of household items from plant and animal materials, including sandals, robes, pouches, mats, and blankets. They also made clay pipes and gaming pieces. Basketmaker men were relatively short and muscular, averaging less than tall. Their skeletal remains reveal signs of hard labor and extensive travel, including degenerative joint disease, healed fractures, and moderate anemia associated with iron deficiency. They buried their dead near or amongst their settlements, and often included luxury items as gifts, which might indicate differences in relative social status. Basketmaker II people are also known for their distinctive rock art, which can be found throughout Mesa Verde. They depicted animals and people, in both abstract and realistic forms, in single works and more elaborate panels. A common subject was the hunchbacked flute player that the Hopi call Kokopelli.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: By 500 AD, atlatls were being supplanted by the bow and arrow and baskets by pottery, marking the end of the Basketmaker II Era and the beginning of the Basketmaker III Era. Ceramic vessels were a major improvement over pitch-lined baskets, gourds, and animal hide containers, which had been the primary water storage containers in the region. Pottery also protected seeds against mold, insects, and rodents. By 600, Pueblonians were using clay pots to cook soups and stews. Year-round settlements first appear around this time. The population of the San Juan Basin increased markedly after 575, when there were very few Basketmaker III sites in Mesa Verde; by the early 7th century, there were many such sites in the mesa. For the next 150 years, villages typically consisted of small groups of one to three residences. The population of Mesa Verde was approximately 1,000 to 1,500 people.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Beans and new varieties of corn were introduced to the region . By 775, some settlements had grown to accommodate more than one hundred people; the construction of large, above-ground storage buildings began around this time. Basketmakers endeavored to store enough food for their family for one year, but also retained residential mobility so they could quickly relocate their dwellings in the event of resource depletion or consistently inadequate crop yields. By the end of the 8th century, the smaller hamlets, which were typically occupied for ten to forty years, had been supplanted by larger ones that saw continuous occupation for as many as two generations. Basketmaker III people established a tradition of holding large ceremonial gatherings near community pit structures.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: 750 marks the end of the Basketmaker III Era and the beginning of the Pueblo I period. The transition is characterized by major changes in the design and construction of buildings and the organization of household activities. Pueblo I people doubled their capacity for food storage from one year to two and built interconnected, year-round residences called pueblos. Many household activities that had previously been reserved for subterranean pit-houses were moved to these above-ground dwellings. This altered the function of pit-houses from all-purpose spaces to ones used primarily for community ceremonies, although they continued to house large extended families, particularly during winter months. During the late 8th century, Pueblonians began building square pit structures that archaeologists call protokivas. They were typically deep and wide.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: The first pueblos appeared at Mesa Verde sometime after 650; by 850 more than half of Pueblonians lived in them. As local populations grew, Puebloans found it difficult to survive on hunting, foraging, and gardening, which made them increasingly reliant on domesticated corn. This shift from semi-nomadism to a "sedentary and communal way of life changed ancestral Pueblo society forever". Within a generation the average number of households in these settlements grew from 1-3 to 15-20, with average populations of two hundred people. Population density increased dramatically, with as many as a dozen families occupying roughly the same space that had formerly housed two. This brought increased security against raids and encouraged greater cooperation amongst residents. It also facilitated trade and intermarriage between clans, and by the late 8th century, as Mesa Verde's population was being augmented by settlers from the south, four distinct cultural groups occupied the same villages.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Large Pueblo I settlements laid claim to the resources found within . They were typically organized in groups of at least three and spaced about apart. By 860, there were approximately 8,000 people living in Mesa Verde. Within the plazas of larger villages, the Pueblo I people dug massive pit structures of that became central gathering places. These structures represent early architectural expressions of what would eventually develop into the Pueblo II Era great houses of Chaco Canyon. Despite robust growth during the early and mid-9th century, unpredictable rainfall and periodic drought led to a dramatic reversal of settlement trends in the area. Many late Pueblo I villages were abandoned after less than forty years of occupation, and by 880 Mesa Verde's population was in steady decline. The beginning of the 10th century saw widespread depopulation of the region, as people emigrated south of the San Juan River to Chaco Canyon in search of reliable rains for farming. As Pueblonians migrated south, to where many of their ancestors had emigrated two hundred years before, the influence of Chaco Canyon grew, and by 950 Chaco had supplanted Mesa Verde as the region's cultural center.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: The Pueblo II Period is marked by the growth and outreach of communities centered around the great houses of Chaco Canyon. Despite their participation in the vast Chacoan system, Pueblonians retained a distinct cultural identity while melding regional innovation with ancient tradition, inspiring further architectural advancements; the 9th century Pueblonian pueblos influenced two hundred years of Chacoan great house construction. Droughts during the late 9th century rendered Pueblonian dry land farming unreliable, which led to their growing crops only near drainages for the next 150 years. Crop yields returned to healthy levels by the early 11th century. By 1050 the population of the area began to rebound; as agricultural prosperity increased, people immigrated to Mesa Verde from the south.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Pueblonian farmers increasingly relied on masonry reservoirs during the Pueblo II Era. During the 11th century, they built check dams and terraces near drainages and slopes in an effort to conserve soil and runoff. These fields offset the danger of crop failures in the larger dry land fields. By the mid-10th and early 11th centuries, protokivas had evolved into smaller circular structures called kivas, which were usually across. These Mesa Verde-style kivas included a feature from earlier times called a sipapu, which is a hole dug in the north of the chamber and symbolizes the Ancestral Puebloan's place of emergence from the underworld. At this time, Pueblonians began to move away from the post and mud jacal-style buildings that marked the Pueblo I Period toward masonry construction, which had been utilized in the region as early as 700, but was not widespread until the 11th and 12th centuries.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: The expansion of Chacoan influence in the Mesa Verde area left its most visible mark in the form of Chaco-style masonry great houses that became the focal point of many Pueblonian villages after 1075. Far View House, the largest of these, is considered a classic Chaco "outlier," on which construction likely began between 1075 and 1125, although some archaeologists argue that it was begun as early as 1020. The era's timber and earth unit pueblos were typically inhabited for about twenty years. During the early 12th century, the locus of regional control shifted away from Chaco to Aztec, New Mexico, in the southern Mesa Verde region. By 1150, drought had once again stressed the region's inhabitants, leading to a temporary cessation of great house construction at Mesa Verde.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: A severe drought from 1130 to 1180 led to rapid depopulation in many parts of the San Juan Basin, particularly at Chaco Canyon. As the extensive Chacoan system collapsed, people increasingly migrated to Mesa Verde, causing major population growth in the area. This led to much larger settlements of six to eight hundred people, which reduced mobility for Pueblonians, who had in the past frequently relocated their dwellings and fields as part of their agriculture strategy. In order to sustain these larger populations, they dedicated more and more of their labor to farming. Population increases also led to expanded tree felling that reduced habitat for many wild plant and animal species that the Pueblonians had relied on, further deepening their dependency on domesticated crops that were susceptible to drought-related failure.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: The Chacoan system brought large quantities of imported goods to Mesa Verde during the late 11th and early 12th centuries, including pottery, shells, and turquoise, but by the late 12th century, as the system collapsed, the amount of goods imported by the mesa quickly declined, and Mesa Verde became isolated from the surrounding region. For approximately six hundred years, most Pueblonian farmers had lived in small, mesa-top homesteads of one or two families. They were typically located near their fields and walking distance to sources of water. This practice continued into the mid- to late 12th century, but by the start of the 13th century they began living in canyon locations that were close to water sources and within walking distance of their fields.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Pueblonian villages thrived during the mid-Pueblo III Era, when architects constructed massive, multi-story buildings, and artisans adorned pottery with increasingly elaborate designs. Structures built during this period have been described as "among the world's greatest archaeological treasures". Pueblo III masonry buildings were typically occupied for approximately fifty years, more than double the usable lifespan of the Pueblo II jacal structures. Others were continuously inhabited for two hundred years or more. Architectural innovations such as towers and multi-walled structures also appear during the Pueblo III Era. Mesa Verde's population remained fairly stable during the 12th century drought. At the start of the 13th century, approximately 22,000 people lived there. The area saw moderate population increases during the following decades, and dramatic ones from 1225 to 1260. Most of the people in the region lived in the plains west of the mesa at locations such as Yellow Jacket Pueblo, near Cortez, Colorado. Others colonized canyon rims and slopes in multi-family structures that grew to unprecedented size as populations swelled. By 1260, the majority of Pueblonians lived in large pueblos that housed several families and more than one hundred people.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: The 13th century saw 69 years of below average rainfall in the Mesa Verde region, and after 1270 the area suffered from especially cold temperatures. Dendrochronology indicates that the last tree felled for construction on the mesa was cut in 1281. There was a major decline in ceramic imports to the region during this time, but local production remained steady. Despite challenging conditions, the Puebloans continued to farm the area until a severely dry period from 1276 to 1299 ended seven hundred years of continuous human occupation at Mesa Verde. Archaeologists refer to this period as the "Great Drought". The last inhabitants of the mesa left the area .


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: During the Pueblo III period (1150 to 1300), Pueblonians built numerous stone masonry towers that likely served as defensive structures. They often incorporated hidden tunnels connecting the towers to associated kivas. Warfare was conducted using the same tools the Pueblonians used for hunting game, including bows and arrows, stone axes, and wooden clubs and spears. They also crafted hide and basket shields that were used only during battles. Periodic warfare occurred on the mesa throughout the 13th century. Civic leaders in the region likely attained power and prestige by distributing food during times of drought. This system probably broke down during the "Great Drought", leading to intense warfare between competing clans. Increasing economic and social uncertainty during the century's final decades led to widespread conflict. Evidence of partly burned villages and post-mortem trauma have been uncovered, and the residents of one village appear to have been the victims of a site-wide massacre.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Evidence of violence and cannibalism has been documented in the central Mesa Verde region. While most of the violence, which peaked between 1275 and 1285, is generally ascribed to in-fighting amongst Pueblonians, archaeological evidence found at Sand Canyon Pueblo, in Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, suggests that violent interactions also occurred between Pueblonians and people from outside the region. Evidence of the attacks was discovered by members of the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center during the 1990s. The assaults, which also occurred at the national monument's Castle Rock Pueblo, were dated to , and are considered to have effectively ended several centuries of Puebloan occupation at those sites. Many of the victims showed signs of skull fractures, and the uniformity of the injuries suggest that most were inflicted with a small stone axe. Others were scalped, dismembered, and cannibalized. The anthropophagy (cannibalism) might have been undertaken as a survival strategy during times of starvation. The archaeological record indicates that, rather than being isolated to the Mesa Verde region, violent conflict was widespread in North America during the late 13th and early 14th centuries, and was likely exacerbated by global climate changes that negatively affected food supplies throughout the continent.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: The Mesa Verde region saw unusually cold and dry conditions during the beginning of the 13th century. This might have driven emigration to Mesa Verde from less hospitable locations. The added population stressed the mesa's environment, further straining an agricultural society that was suffering from drought. The region's bimodal precipitation pattern, which brought rainfall during spring and summer and snowfall during autumn and winter, began to fail post-1250. After 1260, there was a rapid depopulation of Mesa Verde, as "tens of thousands of people" emigrated or died from starvation. Many smaller communities in the Four Corners region were also abandoned during this period. The Ancestral Puebloans had a long history of migration in the face of environmental instability, but the depopulation of Mesa Verde at the end of the 13th century was different in that the region was almost completely emptied, and no descendants returned to build permanent settlements. While drought, resource depletion, and overpopulation all contributed to instability during the last two centuries of Ancestral Puebloan occupation, their overdependence on maize crops is considered the "fatal flaw" of their subsistence strategy.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: The vacating Pueblonians left almost no direct evidence of their migration, but they left behind household goods, including cooking utensils, tools, and clothing, which gave archaeologists the impression that the emigration was haphazard or hurried. An estimated 20,000 people lived in the region during the 13th century, but by the start of the 14th century the area was nearly uninhabited. Many surviving emigrants may have relocated to southern Arizona and New Mexico. Although the rate of settlement is unclear, increases in sparsely populated areas, such as Rio Chama, Pajarito Plateau, and Santa Fe, correspond directly with the period of migration from Mesa Verde. Archaeologists believe the Pueblonians who settled in the areas near the Rio Grande, where Mesa Verde black-on-white pottery became widespread during the 14th century, were likely related to the households they joined and not unwelcome intruders. Archaeologists view this migration as a continuation, versus a dissolution, of Ancestral Puebloan society and culture. Many others relocated to the banks of the Little Colorado River, in western New Mexico and eastern Arizona. While archaeologists tend to focus on the "push" factors that drove the Pueblonians away from the region, there were also several environmental "pull factors", such as warmer temperatures, better farming conditions, plentiful timber, and bison herds, which incentivized relocation to the area near the Rio Grande. In addition to numerous settlements along the Rio Grande, contemporary descendants of the Pueblonians live in pueblos at Acoma, Zuni, Jemez, and Laguna.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Although Chaco Canyon might have exerted regional control over Mesa Verde during the late 11th and early 12th centuries, most archaeologists view the Mesa Verde region as a collection of smaller communities based on central sites and related outliers that were never fully integrated into a larger civic structure. Several ancient roads, averaging wide and lined with earthen berms, have been identified in the region. Most appear to connect communities and shrines; others encircle great house sites. The extent of the network is unclear, but no roads have been discovered leading to the Chacoan Great North Road, or directly connecting Mesa Verde and Chacoan sites.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Ancestral Puebloan shrines, called "herraduras", have been identified near road segments in the region. Their purpose is unclear, but several C-shaped herraduras have been excavated, and they are thought to have been "directional shrines" used to indicate the location of great houses.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Mesa Verde is best known for a large number of well-preserved cliff dwellings, houses built in alcoves, or rock overhangs along the canyon walls. The structures contained within these alcoves were mostly blocks of hard sandstone, held together and plastered with adobe mortar. Specific constructions had many similarities but were generally unique in form due to the individual topography of different alcoves along the canyon walls. In marked contrast to earlier constructions and villages on top of the mesas, the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde reflected a region-wide trend towards the aggregation of growing regional populations into close, highly defensible quarters during the 13th century.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Pueblo buildings were built with stone, windows facing south, and in "U," "E" and "L" shapes. The buildings were located more closely together and reflected deepening religious celebration. Towers were built near kivas and likely used for lookouts. Pottery became more versatile, including pitchers, ladles, bowls, jars and dishware for food and drink. White pottery with black designs emerged, the pigments coming from plants. Water management and conservation techniques, including the use of reservoirs and silt-retaining dams, also emerged during this period.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Styles for these sandstone/mortar constructions, both surface and cliff dwellings, included T-shaped windows and doors. This has been taken by some archaeologists, including Stephen H. Lekson, as evidence of the continuing reach of the Chacoan system. Other researchers see these elements as part of a more generalized Puebloan style or spiritual significance rather than evidence of a continuing specific elite socioeconomic system.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: While much of the construction in these sites is consistent with common Pueblo architectural forms, including kivas, towers, and pit-houses, the space constrictions of these alcoves necessitated what seems to have been a far denser concentration of their populations. Mug House, a typical cliff dwelling of the period, was home to around 100 people who shared 94 small rooms and eight kivas built against each other and sharing many of their walls; builders in these areas maximized space in any way they could, with no areas considered off-limits to construction.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Pueblonians used astronomical observations to plan their farming and religious ceremonies, drawing on both natural features in the landscape and masonry structures built for this purpose. Several great houses in the region were aligned to the cardinal directions, which positioned windows, doors, and walls along the path of the sun, whose rays would indicate the passing of seasons. Mesa Verde's Sun Temple is thought to have been an astronomical observatory.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: The temple is D-shaped, and its alignment is 10.7 degrees off true east–west. Its location and orientation indicate that its builders understood the cycles of both the sun and the moon. It is aligned to the major lunar standstill, which occurs once every 18.6 years, and the sunset during the winter solstice, which can be viewed setting over the temple from a platform at the south end of Cliff Palace, across Fewkes Canyon. At the bottom of the canyon is the Sun Temple fire pit, which is illuminated by the first rays of the rising sun during the winter solstice. Sun Temple is one of the largest exclusively ceremonial structures ever built by the Ancestral Puebloans.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Starting in the 6th century, the farmers living in central Mesa Verde cultivated corn, beans, squash, and gourds. The combination of corn and beans provided the Pueblonians with the amino acids of a complete protein. When conditions were good, of land would provide enough food for a family of three or four individuals for one year, providing they supplemented with game and wild plants. As Pueblonians increasingly relied on corn as a dietary staple, the success or failure of crop yields factored heavily into their lives. The mesa tilts slightly to the south, which increased its exposure to the sun. Before the introduction of pottery, foods were baked, roasted, and parched. Hot rocks dropped into containers could bring water to a brief boil, but because beans must be boiled for an hour or more their use was not widespread until after pottery had disseminated throughout the region. With the increased availability of ceramics after 600, beans became much easier to cook. This provided a high quality protein that reduced reliance on hunting. It also aided corn cultivation, as legumes add much needed nutrients to soils they are grown in, which likely increased corn yields.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Most Pueblonians practiced dry farming, which relied on rain to water their crops, but others utilized runoff, springs, seeps, and natural collection pools. Starting in the 9th century, they dug and maintained reservoirs that caught runoff from summer showers and spring snowmelt; some crops were watered by hand. Archaeologists believe that prior to the 13th century, springs and other sources of water were considered shared public resources, but as Pueblonians moved into increasingly larger pueblos built near or around water supplies control was privatized and limited to members of the surrounding community.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Between 750 and 800, Pueblonians began constructing two large water containment structures in canyon bottoms – the Morefield and Box Elder reservoirs. Soon afterward, work began on two more: the Far View and Sagebrush reservoirs, which were approximately across and constructed on the mesa top. The reservoirs lie on an east–west line that runs for approximately , which suggests builders followed a centralized plan for the system. In 2004, the American Society of Civil Engineers designated these four structures as National Civil Engineering Historic Landmarks. A 2014 geospatial analyses suggested that neither collection nor retention of water was possible in the Far View Reservoir. This interpretation views the structure as a ceremonial space with procession roads in an adaptation of Chacoan culture.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Pueblonians typically harvested local small game, but sometimes organized hunting parties that traveled long distances. Their main sources of animal protein came from mule deer and rabbits, but they occasionally hunted Bighorn sheep, antelope, and elk. They began to domesticate turkeys starting around 1000, and by the 13th century consumption of the animal peaked, supplanting deer as the primary protein source at many sites. These domesticated turkeys consumed large amounts of corn, which further deepened reliance on the staple crop. Puebloans wove blankets from turkey feathers and rabbit fur, and made implements such as awls and needles from turkey and deer bones. Despite the availability of fish in the area's rivers and streams, archaeological evidence suggests that they were rarely eaten.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Pueblonians supplemented their diet by gathering the seeds and fruits of wild plants, searching large expanses of land while procuring these resources. Depending on the season, they collected piñon nuts and juniper berries, weedy goosefoot, pigweed, purslane, tomatillo, tansy mustard, globe mallow, sunflower seeds, and yucca, as well as various species of grass and cacti. Prickly pear fruits provided a rare source of natural sugar. Wild seeds were cooked and ground up into porridge. They used sagebrush and mountain mahogany, along with piñon and juniper, for firewood. They also smoked wild tobacco. Because the Ancestral Puebloans considered all material consumed and discarded by their communities as sacred, their midden piles were viewed with reverence. Starting during the Basketmaker III period, , Pueblonians often buried their dead in these mounds.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Scholars are divided as to whether pottery was invented in the Four Corners region or introduced from the south. Specimens of shallow, unfired clay bowls found at Canyon de Chelly indicate the innovation might have been derived from using clay bowls to parch seeds. Repeated uses rendered these bowls hard and impervious to water, which might represent the first fired pottery in the region. An alternate theory suggests that pottery originated in the Mogollon Rim area to the south, where brown-paste bowls were used during the first few centuries of the common era. Others believe pottery was introduced to Mesa Verde from Mexico, CE. There is no evidence of ancient pottery markets in the region, but archaeologists believe that local potters exchanged decorative wares between families. Cooking pots made with crushed igneous rock tempers from places like Ute Mountain were more resilient and desirable, and Puebloans from throughout the region traded for them.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Neutron activation analysis indicates that much of the black-on-white pottery found at Mesa Verde was produced locally. Cretaceous clays from both the Dakota and Menefee Formations were used in black-on-white wares, and Mancos Formation clays for corrugated jars. Evidence that pottery of both types moved between several locations around the region suggests interaction between groups of ancient potters, or they might have shared a common source of raw materials. The Mesa Verde black-on-white pottery was produced at three locations: Sand Canyon, Castle Rock, and Mesa Verde. Archeological evidence indicates that nearly every household had at least one member who worked as a potter. Trench kilns were constructed away from pueblos and closer to sources of firewood. Their sizes vary, but the larger ones were up to long and thought to have been shared kilns that served several families. Designs were added to ceramic vessels with a Yucca-leaf brush and paints made from iron, manganese, beeplant, and tansy mustard.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Most of the pottery found in 9th century pueblos was sized for individuals or small families, but as communal ceremonialism expanded during the 13th century, many larger, feast–sized vessels were produced. Corrugated decorations appear on Mesa Verde grey wares after 700, and by 1000 entire vessels were crafted in this way. The technique created a rough exterior surface that was easier to hold on to than regular gray wares, which were smooth. By the 11th century these corrugated vessels, which dissipated heat more efficiently than smoother ones, had largely replaced the older style, whose tendency to retain heat made them prone to boiling over. Corrugation likely developed as ancient potters attempted to mimic the visual properties of coiled basketry. Corrugated wares were made using clay from formations other than Menefee, which suggests that ancient potters selected different clays for different styles. Potters also selected clays and altered firing conditions to achieve specific colors. Under normal conditions, pots made of Mancos shale turned grey when fired, and those made of Morrison Formation clay turned white. Clays from southeastern Utah turned red when fired in a high-oxygen environment.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Rock art is found throughout the Mesa Verde region, but its dispersion is uneven and periodic. Some locations have numerous examples; others have none, and some periods saw prolific creation, while others saw little. Styles also vary over time. Examples are relatively rare on Mesa Verde proper, but abundant in the middle San Juan River area, which might indicate the river's importance as a travel route and key source of water. Common motifs in the rock art of the region include anthropomorphic figures in procession and during copulation or childbirth, handprints, animal and people tracks, wavy lines, spirals, concentric circles, animals, and hunting scenes. As the region's population plummeted during the late 13th century, the subject of Pueblonian rock art increasingly shifted to depictions of shields, warriors, and battle scenes. Modern Hopi have interpreted the petroglyphs at Mesa Verde's Petroglyph Point as depictions of various clans of people.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Starting during the late Pueblo II period (1020) and continuing through Pueblo III (1300), the Ancestral Puebloans of the Mesa Verde region created plaster murals in their great houses, particularly in their kivas. The murals contained both painted and inscribed images depicting animals, people, and designs used in textiles and pottery dating back as far as Basketmaker III, . Others depict triangles and mounds thought to represent mountains and hills in the surrounding landscape. The murals were typically located on the face of the kiva bench and usually encircled the room. Geometric patterns that resemble symbols used in pottery and zigzag that represent stitches used in basket making are common motifs. The painted murals include the colors red, green, yellow, white, brown, and blue. The designs were still in use by the Hopi during the 15th and 16th centuries.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: According to the Köppen climate classification system, Mesa Verde National Park has a dry-summer humid continental climate ("Dsa"). According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the Plant Hardiness zone at Mesa Verde National Park Headquarters at 6952 ft (2119 m) elevation is 6b with an average annual extreme minimum temperature of −0.1 °F (−17.8 °C).


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: The region's precipitation pattern is bimodal, meaning agriculture is sustained through snowfall during winter and autumn and rainfall during spring and summer. Water for farming and consumption was provided by summer rains, winter snowfall, and seeps and springs in and near the Mesa Verde villages. At , the middle mesa areas were typically ten degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 °C) cooler than the mesa top, which reduced the amount of water needed for farming. The cliff dwellings were built to take advantage of solar energy. The angle of the sun in winter warmed the masonry of the cliff dwellings, warm breezes blew from the valley, and the air was ten to twenty degrees warmer in the canyon alcoves than on the top of the mesa. In the summer, with the sun high overhead, much of the village was protected from direct sunlight in the high cliff dwellings.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Anthropogenic ecology refers to the human impact on animals and plants in an ecosystem. A shift from medium and large game animals, such as deer, bighorn sheep, and antelope, to smaller ones like rabbits and turkey during the mid-10th to mid-13th centuries might indicate that Pueblonian subsistence hunting had dramatically altered faunal populations on the mesa. Analysis of pack rat midden indicates that, with the exception of invasive species such as tumbleweed and clover, the flora and fauna in the area have remained relatively consistent for the past 4,000 years.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: According to the A. W. Kuchler U.S. Potential natural vegetation Types, Mesa Verde National Park has a Juniper/Pinyon ("23") potential vegetation type with a Great Basin montane forest /Southwest Forest ("4") potential vegetation form.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Mesa Verde's canyons were created by streams that eroded the hard sandstone that covers the area. This resulted in Mesa Verde National Park elevations ranging from about , the highest elevation at Park Point. The terrain in the park is now a transition zone between the low desert plateaus and the Rocky Mountains.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Although the area's first Spanish explorers named the feature "Mesa Verde", the term is a misnomer, as true mesas are almost perfectly flat. Because Mesa Verde is slanted to the south, the proper geological term is cuesta, not mesa. The park is made up of several smaller cuestas located between canyons. Mesa Verde's slant contributed to the formation of the alcoves that have preserved the area's cliff dwellings.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: In the late Cretaceous Period, the Mancos Shale was deposited on top of the Dakota Sandstone, which is the rock formation that can be found under much of Colorado. The beds of the Mancos Shale are "fine-grained sand-stones, mudstones, and shales" which accumulated in the deep water of the Cretaceous Sea. It has a high clay content which causes it to expand when wet leading to sliding of the terrain. On top of this shale, there are three formations in the Mesaverde group which reflect the changes in depositional environment in the area over time. The first is the Point Lookout Sandstone, which is named for the Point Lookout feature in the park (elevation 8427 feet). This sandstone, which formed in the marine environment of shallow water when the Cretaceous sea was receding, is "massive, fine-grained, cross-bedded, and very resistant", in its layers reflecting waves and currents that were present during the time of its formation. Its sediments are approximately 400 feet thick, and its upper layers feature fossiliferous invertebrates.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Next is the Menefee Formation, the middle formation whose content features interbedded carbonaceous shales, siltstones, and sandstones. These were deposited in semi-marine environments of brackish water, such as swamps and lagoons. Due to its depositional environment and the organic material in its composition, there are thin coal seams running through the Menefee Formation. At the top, this formation is intruded upon by the Cliff House Sandstone.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: The Cliff House Sandstone is the area's youngest rock layer. It was formed after the Cretaceous sea had completely receded and as a result has a high sand content from beaches, dunes, etc. and from this receives its characteristic yellow tint to its canyon faces. Like the Point Lookout Sandstone, it is about 400 feet thick. It contains numerous fossil beds of different types of shells, fish teeth, and other invertebrate leftovers from the receded sea. The shale zones in this feature determine where alcoves formed where the Ancestral Puebloans constructed their dwellings.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Continuing through the Cretaceous period and into the early Tertiary, there was uplifting in the area of the Colorado Plateau, the San Juan Mountains, and the La Plata Mountains, which led to the formation of the Mesa Verde pediment with the help of erosion. Small channels of water ran across this formation depositing gravel. Later in the tertiary, the last period of uplift and rock tilting towards the south caused these streams to cut rapidly into the rock removing loose sediment and forming the vast canyons seen today. This caused the isolation of the Mesa Verde pediment from surrounding rock. Today, since the climate is more arid, these erosional processes are slowed.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Mexican-Spanish missionaries and explorers Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, seeking a route from Santa Fe to California, faithfully recorded their travels in 1776. They reached Mesa Verde ("green plateau") region, which they named after its high, tree-covered plateaus, but they never got close enough, or into the needed angle, to see the ancient stone villages. They were the first Europeans to travel the route through much of the Colorado Plateau into Utah and back through Arizona to New Mexico.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: The Mesa Verde region has long been occupied by the Utes, and an 1868 treaty between them and the United States government recognized Ute ownership of all Colorado land west of the Continental Divide. After there had become an interest in land in western Colorado, a new treaty in 1873 left the Ute with a strip of land in southwestern Colorado between the border with New Mexico and 15 miles north. Most of Mesa Verde lies within this strip of land. The Ute wintered in the warm, deep canyons and found sanctuary there and the high plateaus of Mesa Verde. Believing the cliff dwellings to be sacred ancestral sites, they did not live in the ancient dwellings.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Occasional trappers and prospectors visited, with one prospector, John Moss, making his observations known in 1873. The following year, Moss led eminent photographer William Henry Jackson through Mancos Canyon, at the base of Mesa Verde. There, Jackson both photographed and publicized a typical stone cliff dwelling. Geologist William H. Holmes retraced Jackson's route in 1875. Reports by both Jackson and Holmes were included in the 1876 report of the Hayden Survey, one of the four federally financed efforts to explore the American West. These and other publications led to proposals to systematically study Southwestern archaeological sites.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: In her quest to find Ancestral Puebloan settlements, Virginia McClurg, a journalist for the "New York Daily Graphic", visited Mesa Verde in 1882 and 1885. Her party rediscovered Echo Cliff House, Three Tier House, and Balcony House in 1885; these discoveries inspired her to protect the dwellings and artifacts.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: A family of cattle ranchers, the Wetherills, befriended members of the Ute tribe near their ranch southwest of Mancos, Colorado. With the Ute tribe's approval, the Wetherills were allowed to bring cattle into the lower, warmer plateaus of the present Ute reservation during winter. Word of the Ancestral Puebloan great houses had spread, and Acowitz, a member of the Ute tribe, told the Wetherills of a special cliff dwelling in Mesa Verde: "Deep in that canyon and near its head are many houses of the old people – the Ancient Ones. One of those houses, high, high in the rocks, is bigger than all the others. Utes never go there, it is a sacred place."


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: On December 18, 1888, Richard Wetherill and cowboy Charlie Mason rediscovered Cliff Palace after spotting the ruins from the top of Mesa Verde. Wetherill gave the ruin its present-day name. Richard Wetherill, family and friends explored the ruins and gathered artifacts, some of which they sold to the Historical Society of Colorado and much of which they kept. Among the people who stayed with the Wetherills and explored the cliff dwellings was mountaineer, photographer, and author Frederick H. Chapin, who visited the region during 1889 and 1890. He described the landscape and ruins in an 1890 article and later in an 1892 book, "The Land of the Cliff-Dwellers", which he illustrated with hand-drawn maps and personal photographs.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: The Wetherills also hosted Gustaf Nordenskiöld, the son of polar explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, in 1891. Nordenskiöld was a trained mineralogist who introduced scientific methods to artifact collection, recorded locations, photographed extensively, diagrammed sites, and correlated what he observed with existing archaeological literature as well as the home-grown expertise of the Wetherills. He removed many artifacts and sent them to Sweden, where they eventually went to the National Museum of Finland. Nordenskiöld published, in 1893, "The Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde". When Nordenskiöld shipped the collection that he made of Mesa Verde artifacts, the event initiated concerns about the need to protect Mesa Verde land and its resources.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: In 1889, Goodman Point Pueblo became the first pre-Columbian archaeological site in the Mesa Verde region to gain federal protection. It was the first such site to be protected in the US. Virginia McClurg was diligent in her efforts between 1887 and 1906 to inform the United States and European community of the importance of protecting the important historical material and dwellings in Mesa Verde. Her efforts included enlisting support from 250,000 women through the Federation of Women's Clubs, writing and having published poems in popular magazines, giving speeches domestically and internationally, and forming the Colorado Cliff Dwellers Association.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: The Colorado Cliff Dwellers' purpose was to protect the resources of Colorado cliff dwellings, reclaiming as much of the original artifacts as possible and sharing information about the people who dwelt there. A fellow activist for protection of Mesa Verde and prehistoric archaeological sites included Lucy Peabody, who, located in Washington, D.C., met with members of Congress to further the cause. Former Mesa Verde National Park superintendent Robert Heyder communicated his belief that the park might have been far more significant with the hundreds of artifacts taken by Nordenskiöld.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: By the end of the 19th century, it was clear that Mesa Verde needed protection from people in general who came to Mesa Verde and created or sold their own collection of artifacts. In a report to the Secretary of the Interior, Smithsonian Institution Ethnologist Jesse Walter Fewkes described vandalism at Mesa Verde's Cliff Palace:


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Many artifacts from Mesa Verde are now located in museums and private collections in the US and across the world. A representative selection of pottery vessels and other objects, for example, is now in the British Museum in London. In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt approved creation of the Mesa Verde National Park and the Federal Antiquities Act of 1906. The park was an effort to "preserve the works of man" and was the first park created to protect a location of cultural significance. The park was named with the Spanish term for "green table" because of its forests of juniper and piñon trees.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: In 1976, was designated a wilderness area. These three small and separate sections of the National Park are located on the steep north and east boundaries and serve as buffers to further protect the significant Native American sites. Unlike most wilderness areas, visitor access to Mesa Verde Wilderness is prohibited, along with the rest of the park's backcountry.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Between 1908 and 1922, Spruce Tree House, Cliff Palace, and Sun Temple ruins were stabilised. Most of the early efforts were led by Jesse Walter Fewkes. During the 1930s and 40s, Civilian Conservation Corps workers, starting in 1932, played key roles in excavation efforts, building trails and roads, creating museum exhibits and constructing buildings at Mesa Verde. From 1958 to 1965, Wetherill Mesa Archaeological Project included archaeological excavations, stabilization of sites, and surveys. With excavation and study of eleven Wetherill Mesa sites, it is considered the largest archaeological effort in the US. The project oversaw the excavation of Long House and Mug House.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: In 1966, as with all historical areas administered by the National Park Service, Mesa Verde was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and in 1987, the Mesa Verde Administrative District was listed on the register. It was designated a World Heritage Site in 1978. In its 2015 travel awards, "Sunset" magazine named Mesa Verde National Park "the best cultural attraction" in the Western United States.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Clashes between non-Indigenous environmentalists and local tribes surrounding the ruins at Mesa Verde began even before the park's official establishment. Conflicts over who laid claim to the land surrounding the ruins came to fruition in 1911, when the US government wanted to secure more land for the park that was owned by the Ute Indians. The Utes were reluctant to agree to the land swap proposed by the government, noting that the land they were seeking was the best land the tribe owned. Frederick Abbott, working with Indian Office official James McLaughlin, proclaimed to be an ally to the Ute in negotiations. Abbott later claimed that the "government was stronger than the Utes," saying that when the government finds "old ruins on land that it wants to take for public purposes, it has the right to take it ..." Feeling they were left with no other options, the Utes reluctantly agreed to trade the 10,000 acres on Chapin Mesa for 19,500 acres on Ute Mountain.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: The Utes continued to battle the Bureau of Indian Affairs to prevent more Ute land from being incorporated into the park. In 1935, the BIA attempted to gain back some the land traded in 1911. Additionally, superintendent Jesse L. Nusbaum later confessed that the Ute Mountain land traded for Chapin Mesa in 1911 belonged to the tribe anyway, meaning the government had traded land that never belonged to them in the first place.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Other issues unrelated to land disputes emerged as a result of park activities. In the 1920s, the park began offering "Indian ceremony" performances that gained popularity among visiting tourists; however, the ceremonies did not actually reflect the rites of the Ancient Puebloans who lived in the cliff dwellings nor the rites of the modern Ute. Navajo day laborers performed these rituals, resulting in "the wrong Indians doing the wrong dance on ... the wrong land." In addition to the inaccuracy of the ceremonies, a question of whether Navajo dancers were paid fairly also resulted in questions regarding the lack of local American Indians being employed in other capacities in the park. Additionally, the park offered little financial benefits to the Ute Mountain Ute despite their land swap making much of the park possible.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: The entrance to Mesa Verde National Park is on U.S. Route 160, approximately east of the community of Cortez and west of Mancos, Colorado. The park covers It contains 4,372 documented sites, including more than 600 cliff dwellings. It is the largest archaeological preserve in the US. It protects some of the most important and best-preserved archaeological sites in the country. The park initiated the Archaeological Site Conservation Program in 1995. It analyses data pertaining to how sites are constructed and utilized.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: The Mesa Verde Visitor and Research Center is located just off of Highway 160 and is before the park entrance booths. The Visitor and Research Center opened in December 2012. Chapin Mesa (the most popular area) is beyond the visitor center. Mesa Verde National Park is an area of federal exclusive jurisdiction. Because of this all law enforcement, emergency medical service, and wildland/structural fire duties are conducted by federal National Park Service Law Enforcement Rangers. The Mesa Verde National Park Post Office has the ZIP code 81330. Access to park facilities vary by season. Three of the cliff dwellings on Chapin Mesa are open to the public. The Chapin Mesa Museum is open all year. Spruce Tree House is also open all year, weather permitting. Balcony House, Long House and Cliff Palace require tour tickets for ranger-guided tours. Many other dwellings are visible from the road but not open to tourists. The park offers hiking trails, a campground, and, during peak season, facilities for food, fuel, and lodging; these are unavailable in the winter.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: The park's early administrative buildings, located on Chapin Mesa, form an architecturally significant complex of buildings. Built in the 1920s, the Mesa Verde administrative complex was one of the first examples of the Park Service using culturally appropriate design in the development of park facilities. The area was designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1987.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: During the years 1996 to 2003, the park suffered from several wildfires. The fires, many of which were started by lightning during times of drought, burned of forest, more than half the park. The fires also damaged many archaeological sites and park buildings. They were named: Chapin V (1996), Bircher and Pony (2000), Long Mesa (2002), and the Balcony House Complex fires (2003), which were five fires that began on the same day. The Chapin V and Pony fires destroyed two rock art sites, and the Long Mesa fire nearly destroyed the museum – the first one ever built in the National Park System – and Spruce Tree House, the third largest cliff dwelling in the park.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Prior to the fires of 1996 to 2003, archaeologists had surveyed approximately ninety percent of the park. Dense undergrowth and tree cover kept many ancient sites hidden from view, but after the Chapin V, Bircher and Pony fires, 593 previously undiscovered sites were revealed – most of them date to the Basketmaker III and Pueblo I periods. Also uncovered during the fires were extensive water containment features, including 1,189 check dams, 344 terraces, and five reservoirs that date to the Pueblo II and III periods. In February 2008, the Colorado Historical Society decided to invest a part of its $7 million budget into a culturally modified trees project in the national park.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: The Ute Mountain Tribal Park, adjoining Mesa Verde National Park to the east of the mountains, is approximately along the Mancos River. Hundreds of surface sites, cliff dwellings, petroglyphs, and wall paintings of Ancestral Puebloan and Ute cultures are preserved in the park. Native American Ute tour guides provide background information about the people, culture, and history of the park lands. "National Geographic Traveler" chose it as one of "80 World Destinations for Travel in the 21st Century", one of only nine places selected in the US.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: In addition to the cliff dwellings, Mesa Verde boasts a number of mesa-top ruins. Examples open to public access include the Far View Complex and Cedar Tree Tower on Chapin Mesa, and Badger House Community, on Wetherill Mesa.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Balcony House is set on a high ledge facing east. Its 45 rooms and 2 kivas would have been cold during the winter. Visitors on ranger-guided tours enter by climbing a 32-foot ladder and crawling through a small 12-foot tunnel. The exit, a series of toe-holds in a cleft of the cliff, was believed to be the only entry and exit route for the cliff dwellers, which made the small village easy to defend and secure. One log was dated at 1278, so it was likely built not long before the Mesa Verde people migrated out of the area. It was officially excavated in 1910 by Jesse L. Nusbaum, who was the first National Park Service Archeologist and one of the first Superintendents of Mesa Verde National Park. Visitors can enter Balcony House only through a ranger-guided tour, which involves numerous ladders up the cliff face and crawling through a small tunnel.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: This multi-storied ruin, the best-known cliff dwelling in Mesa Verde, is located in the largest alcove in the center of the Great Mesa. It was south- and southwest-facing, providing greater warmth from the sun in the winter. Dating back more than 700 years, the dwelling is constructed of sandstone, wooden beams, and mortar. Many of the rooms were brightly painted. Cliff Palace was home to approximately 125 people, but was likely an important part of a larger community of sixty nearby pueblos, which housed a combined six hundred or more people. With 23 kivas and 150 rooms, Cliff Palace is the largest cliff dwelling in Mesa Verde National Park.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Located on the Wetherill Mesa, Long House is the second-largest Pueblonian village; approximately 150 people lived there. The location was excavated from 1959 through 1961, as part of the Wetherhill Mesa Archaeological Project. Long House was built ; it was occupied until 1280. The cliff dwelling features 150 rooms, a kiva, a tower, and a central plaza. Its rooms are not clustered like typical cliff dwellings. Stones were used without shaping for fit and stability. Two overhead ledges contain storage space for grain. One ledge seems to include an overlook with small holes in the wall to see the rest of the village below. A spring is accessible within several hundred feet, and seeps are located in the rear of the village.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Mug House is located on Wetherill Mesa; it contains 94 rooms, a large kiva, and a nearby reservoir. It received its name from four mugs the Charles Mason and the Wetherill brothers found strung together at the site.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: Spruce Tree House is the third-largest village, within several hundred feet of a spring, and had 130 rooms and eight kivas. It was constructed sometime between 1211 and 1278. It is believed anywhere from 60 to 80 people lived there at one time. Because of its protective location, it is well preserved. The short trail to Spruce Tree House begins at the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum.


title: Mesa Verde National Park

text: The Square Tower House is one of the stops on the Mesa Top Loop Road driving tour. The tower is the tallest structure in Mesa Verde.


title: Sewanee: The University of the South

text: The University of the South, familiarly known as Sewanee (), is a private Episcopal liberal arts college in Sewanee, Tennessee. It is owned by 28 southern dioceses of the Episcopal Church, and its School of Theology is an official seminary of the church. The university's School of Letters offers graduate degrees in American Literature and Creative Writing. The campus (officially called "The Domain" or, affectionately, "The Mountain") consists of of scenic mountain property atop the Cumberland Plateau, with the developed portion occupying about .


title: Sewanee: The University of the South

text: Beginning in the 1830s Bishop James Otey of Tennessee led an effort to found an Episcopal seminary in the Deep South. Following the Mexican War the Episcopal Church saw tremendous growth in the region, and a real need for an institution "to train natives, for natives" as Otey put it arose. Up to that point only the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia existed south of the Mason-Dixon Line and other denominations were already establishing schools in the region. The location was chosen primarily because of the proximity to the major railway hub of Chattanooga, Tennessee and the existing railroad spur up the mountain, the "Mountain Goat" which ran from 1858 until April 1985. Bishop Leonidas Polk commented that due to the access to railroads one could reach any point in the South from Sewanee within thirty-six to forty-eight hours.


title: Sewanee: The University of the South

text: On July 4, 1857, delegates from ten Southern dioceses of the Episcopal Church in the United States—Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas—were led up Monteagle Mountain by Polk for the founding of their denominational college for the region. The goal was to create a Southern university free of Northern influences. As Otey put it: the new university will "materially aid the South to resist and repel a fanatical domination which seeks to rule over us." The majority of the land for the university was donated by the Sewanee Mining Company on the condition that a university "be put in operation within ten years". The company's early profits were derived from the labor of mainly African-American convict leasing.


title: Sewanee: The University of the South

text: The six-ton marble cornerstone, laid on October 10, 1860, and consecrated by Polk, was blown up in 1863 by Union soldiers; many of the pieces were collected and kept as keepsakes by the soldiers. A few were donated back to the university, and a large fragment was eventually installed in a wall of All Saints' Chapel. Several figures later prominent in the Confederacy, notably Polk, Bishop Stephen Elliott, Jr., and Bishop James Hervey Otey, were significant founders of the university. Generals Edmund Kirby Smith, Josiah Gorgas and Francis A. Shoup were prominent in the university's postbellum revival and continuance.


title: Sewanee: The University of the South

text: Because of the damage and disruptions during the Civil War, construction came to a temporary halt. Polk died in action during the Atlanta campaign. He is remembered through his portrait "Sword Over the Gown", painted by Eliphalet F. Andrews in 1900. After the original was vandalized in 1998, a copy by Connie Erickson was unveiled on June 1, 2003.


title: Sewanee: The University of the South

text: In 1866, building was resumed, and this date is sometimes used as the re-founding of the university and the year from which it has maintained continuous operations (though official materials and anniversary celebrations still use 1857). The university's first convocation was held on September 18, 1868, with nine students and four faculty members present. Presiding was the Rt. Rev. Charles Todd Quintard, vice-chancellor (chief academic officer) of the university, second Bishop of Tennessee and "Chaplain of the Confederacy" (compiler of the "Confederate Soldiers' Pocket Manual of Devotions", 1863). He attended the first Lambeth Conference in England (1868) and received financial support from clergy and laity of the Church of England for rebuilding the school. Quintard is known as the "Re-Founder" of the University of the South.


title: Sewanee: The University of the South

text: During World War II, the University of the South was one of 131 tertiary institutions nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program, which offered students a path to a Navy commission.


title: Sewanee: The University of the South

text: Schools of dentistry, engineering, law, medicine, and nursing once existed, and a secondary school was part of the institution into the second half of the 20th century. However, for financial reasons it was eventually decided to focus on the college and the School of Theology. In June 2006, Sewanee opened its School of Letters, a second graduate school. The School of Letters offers a Master of Arts in American Literature and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing.


title: Sewanee: The University of the South

text: For the period 2004 to about 2016, the institution combined its two historical names in all university publications that were not official documents and styled itself as "Sewanee: The University of the South". Version three of the university's style guide, a document reflecting the official policies of the university with respect to its public image following the name change, stated in part:


title: Sewanee: The University of the South

text: When this naming system was proposed in 2004, it was misinterpreted by some alumni to reflect a change in the official name of the university. A minor scandal ensued, with more conservative commentators insinuating that the change was intended to "distance" the university from its historic association with Southern culture. "Some alumni were also angered by a report commissioned by the university last year [2004] by a marketing firm from Chicago that said that the word 'South' often had negative connotations for students around the country; the weaker the connection between the South and the university's name, the better, the consultants said."


title: Sewanee: The University of the South

text: As of February 2016, the university has reverted to using the University of the South as its official name on all correspondence. Version six of the university's style guide now instructs university employees to “use 'the University of the South' on first reference," though it may be accompanied by the modifying, "familiarly known as Sewanee."


title: Sewanee: The University of the South

text: In the wake of several women coming forward with allegations of sexual harassment against television personality Charlie Rose, many educational institutions revoked honorary degrees bestowed on him. Sewanee's board of regents initially declined to do so, citing a desire to "not condemn the individual". However, due to particular backlash originating from student members of the board of trustees and faculty in the university's school of theology, the board of regents reversed their original decision and rescinded Rose's honorary doctorate.


title: Sewanee: The University of the South

text: In September 2020, the board released a statement acknowledging for the first time that the university "was long entangled with, and played a role in, slavery, racial segregation, and white supremacy". It added that the university "categorically rejects its past veneration of the Confederacy and of the 'Lost Cause' and wholeheartedly commits itself to an urgent process of institutional reckoning ...". The university announced that it will utilize the findings of its Roberson Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation (which began in 2017) to guide their current discussions and path forward.