Over the weekend, a wildfire erupted along a stretch of tribal land where the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation meets Mesa Verde National Park, reaching just over 175 acres as of Monday morning.
The fire was first reported at Saturday just past 2 p.m., according to Watch Duty. Within about 2½ hours, the blaze had grown by 15 acres.
By Sunday at 9 a.m., the fire had grown to 45 acres and sat just a mile outside of Mesa Verde. By then, a Type 3 Bureau of Indian Affairs team had reportedly begun overseeing the fire.
Within hours, the fire had grown roughly three times its size, reaching 150 acres by about 1 p.m.
The wildfire burns just miles from the national park’s Cliff Palace, with a few canyons winding their way in between the active burn zone and the Ancestral Puebloan site, Montezuma County GIS data indicates.
The Journal could not calculate exact mile distance from the site due to a notable addition in mileage distance from terrain.
This is a developing story, and updates will be provided at the-journal.com when they become available.
