{"id":18352,"date":"2025-08-04T16:55:30","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T16:55:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/just-outside-of-mesa-verde-waters-canyon-fire-blooms-over-weekend\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:03:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:03:30","slug":"just-outside-of-mesa-verde-waters-canyon-fire-blooms-over-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/just-outside-of-mesa-verde-waters-canyon-fire-blooms-over-weekend\/","title":{"rendered":"Just outside of Mesa Verde, Waters Canyon Fire blooms over weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Smoke
Smoke observed from the Mancos Valley Overlook in Mesa Verde National Park Saturday evening. (Benjamin Rubin\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The fire was first reported at Saturday just past 2 p.m., according to Watch Duty<\/a>. Within about 2\u00bd hours, the blaze had grown by 15 acres.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Within hours, the fire had grown roughly three times its size, reaching 150 acres by about 1 p.m.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot
Screenshot from the Watch Duty wildfire monitoring site. (Watch Duty\/Courtesy photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The wildfire burns just miles from the national park\u2019s 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Journal<\/em> could not calculate exact mile distance from the site due to a notable addition in mileage distance from terrain.<\/p>\n

This is a developing story, and updates will be provided at the-journal.com when they become available.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

on east side of Ute Mountain Ute land, borders Mesa Verde<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18353,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-18352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18352"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20540,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18352\/revisions\/20540"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18352"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=18352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}