Ancient history in plain sight at Four Corners

September 11, 2011|By Robin Soslow, Globe Correspondent

The patio on the grounds of Kelly Place offers a view of Sleeping Ute Mountain… (PHOTOS BY ROBIN SOSLOW FOR…)

CORTEZ, Colo. - “One morning after heavy rains flooded that arroyo, I found a skull,’’ said Marc Yaxley, nodding toward the dry gully bordering his remote bed-and-breakfast. “I had my fingers in the eye sockets,’’ he said, before realizing he was handling someone’s head. “Every day is like a reality TV show here.’’

Plenty of B&Bs boast historic landmark status, but Kelly Place has its own archeological preserve. The grounds include two dozen documented prehistoric sites, including underground and cliffside chambers built by ancestral Puebloans dating to 1150-1300 AD.

Yaxley and Jerene Waite bought Kelly Place six years ago sight unseen. The 38-acre property in southwestern Colorado came up for sale when the couple decided to leave San Diego, where he was a software engineer and she a neuroscientist. “We wanted to find some forgotten place in low-density America between the coasts,’’ Yaxley said.

The lodge and its outbuildings, gardens, and orchards push right up to the otherworldly red rock hills of McElmo Canyon. Gaze from the patio at Sleeping Ute Mountain; turn and hike into the back of Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. The vistas keep going, with magnificent views of Mesa Verde, La Plata peaks, and the San Juan Mountains.

Kelly Place began in the 1960s as a retirement dream for George Kelly, a horticulturist at Denver Botanic Gardens, and his wife, Sue. It was a curious retirement endeavor, given all that they built, planted, and excavated in their canyon oasis.

Unlike the Kellys, Yaxley and Waite had no plans to retire. They gussied up the main lodge, adobe-style cabins, and day lodge used for receptions, retreats, and workshops, and established RV and tent sites. They organize archeologist-led hikes and rent the onsite sweat lodge. They will get you a spiritual leader if you don’t bring your own.

The relic-rich land remains a hot spot for archeologists digging up pottery shards, cooking tools, and human remains.

“When we have a flash flood, it can uncover 8 to 10 feet of buried Indian relics,’’ Yaxley said. Examples include a metate and mano, tools commonly paired for centuries by indigenous people to crush corn.

“Interesting things always pop up. We found [the remains of] a whole family of seven dating to 975 AD,’’ he said. He recited proper protocol: Notify government authorities, usher in anthropologists who study the bones to determine age, sex, cause of death. The absence of marrow in some bones? Cannibalism. That revelation didn’t deter Yaxley’s junior apprenticing: “We reassembled all the humans in the day lodge.’’