A Native City in the Sky

On Saturday Ariana and I and a couple of friends from California headed to the pueblo of Acoma (AH-koo-ma), New Mexico built on a massive sandstone mesa 367-feet above the valley floor.

Legend describes Acoma as a "place that always was" but native verbal history says it was first inhabited about 700 A.D. Archaeologists agree that it has definetly been continuously occupied from at least 1150 A.D. to the present. This makes it the oldest continuously inhabited city in America.

Visitors to "The Sky City", as it's called, can still see how the Acoma people lived centuries ago because more than a dozen of the original families still live in a traditional way atop the mesa year-round. They have no electricity or running water. We received a tour of the city and witnessed a traditional dance. It was an amazing day.