It is difficult to suggest how many of the cliff dwellings fall into the
51-to-100-room group. There are several reasons for this.
First of all, as has been suggested, it is difficult to count the rooms
in an unexcavated ruin. What was once a large ruin may be little more
than a mass of fallen stones. Evidences of upper stories often have
disappeared entirely. If one enters a cave and counts the rooms that are
in evidence it is usually safe to assume that many more have disappeared
completely.
Another difficulty is that little of the Mesa Verde has been explored in
modern times. The remote parts of the mesa, over half of which is Ute
Indian Reservation, have had little exploration since the days of the
cowboys. Hundreds of the ruins have not been entered in modern times. It
is doubtful if any living person has been in one hundred of the Mesa
Verde cliff dwellings. Distant views have been had of a great many but
only a small number in the more accessible areas have been entered.
Thus it is difficult to estimate the number of ruins that contained from
51 to 100 rooms. Probably there were a dozen—perhaps there were twice
that many. A more definite answer must await further exploration.
In this discussion of the large ruins one thing becomes evident. Only a
small portion of the people lived in the larger villages. The bulk of
the population was in the smaller villages, of which there were several
hundred.
[Illustration: Kodak House
Kodak House is an excellent example of a large cliff dwelling. It is
also an excellent example of the ruins that were badly treated by the
early explorers. Large portions of this ruin were pushed out of the cave
by the men who were digging for articles of value. Kodak House appears
to have contained at least seventy rooms originally.]