Colorado Springs: Manitou Cliff Dwellers' Ruin Co., ND. (22pp). Original printed wrappers. Wraps chipped with some loss, internally clean and very good. Here's an interesting take on historic preservation. In the first decades of the 20th century (this piece is not dated, but the company name appears in the Colorado Springs directory for 1911) interest in the ruins of Mesa Verde grew rapidly, but access to the ruins was difficult. The Manitou Cliff Dwellers' Ruins Co. met this need by buying ruins on private land, and dismantling them to reconstruct "exact rerorductions" of portions of Spruce Tree House, Cliff Palace and Balcony House in a canyon more convenient to Manitou, Colorado. This promotional offers photos of the reconstructions, plus a fifteen page essay on "The Southwest of Yesterday" by J. A. Jeancon. One of the photos is a four panel fold out panorama of the reconstruction. Impressive, but obvipusly bogus. Item #26518

Price: $95.00