Theodore Roosevelt Presidential LibraryPublic Lands Directory

Alerts and conditions

All clear. The managing agency, the National Weather Service and wildfire reporting show no current alerts.

Overview

Yucca House National Monument preserves a large unexcavated pueblo with a stunning setting in Montezuma Valley, nestled between Mesa Verde and Ute Mountain. Since Yucca House was protected as a national monument in 1919, it has remained largely untouched, offering intrepid visitors a sense of discovery and preserving the pueblo's beauty and integrity for future generations.

From the National Park Service

History

The designation history for this site (every law, proclamation and order, and the administration behind each) is being researched and checked by the Library’s historians.

What to see and do

Activities

  • Guided Tours
  • Self-Guided Tours - Walking

Browse hiking, biking and paddling routes on AllTrails

Plan your visit

Hours

Yucca House National Monument: Open year-round, weather pending. No services are available.

Getting there

From Cortez, take Hwy. 491 south approximately 8 miles. Take a right on MC County Road B (green sign), which is a dirt road one mile south of MC Road C. Drive 0.8 miles, crossing a paved road (MC Road 21), and take the next dirt road on the right (before the farmhouse on the left). Follow this road north and west for 1.4 miles, and head towards a white ranch house with a red roof on the west horizon. Once at the ranch house, Yucca House NM is on the left side if the driveway.

Weather

Spring and Fall are mild with daytime temperatures ranging from 50 F to 80 F. Winter temperatures are below 50 F with occasional snowstorms. Summers are hot and dry, with highs in the 90s.

Phone: 970-529-4465

Whose lands these are

These lands are the ancestral and present-day homelands of Native nations. A section on whose lands these are is being prepared with tribal review. In the meantime, Native Land Digital offers a starting point.

Photos

View of Mesa Verde landform
View of Mesa Verde from Yucca House · NPS Photo
Masonry walls seen through shrubbery
Walls of the Yucca House Pueblo · NPS Photo
Close up view of an ancient wall at Yucca House
Ancestral Puebloan Wall at Yucca House · NPS Photo
View of ancient wall in the center of agricultural land surrounding it.
Yucca House in Context · NPS Photo

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