Mysteries and Legends of Colorado : True Stories of the Unsolved and Unexplained

Jan Murphy is a lifelong enthusiast of all things Colorado, having attended the University of Colorado in Boulder and taught Colorado history at Lockheed Martin Astronautic's Evening Institute. She lives in Lakewood, Colorado.

Al Wetherill stared at the site in front of him and wondered, "Who were these people and where did they go?" He already knew from the old pottery shards in the area that some ancient peoples must have lived there long ago. But this new sighting interested him.

It was 1882 when Benjamin Alfred (Al) Wetherill had been been told of an odd sight by a man who wintered his stock in Mancos Canyon southwest of present-day Durango, Colorado. The man had looked up into the cliffs and had seen the uninhabited rock ruins of some type of a dwelling, with broad white stripes painted on the walls.

Wetherill, who lived on the nearby Alamo Ranch with his brothers, decided to ride his horse into the canyon and look for himself. He traveled about twelve miles, as the man had instructed, and saw nothing. With dusk approaching he decided to turn back, but as he did his eye caught the top rim of a cave directly above him. It was about 100 feet up. He dismounted his horse and scrambled up the rocky slope. There before him stood standing walls built of rock and painted with white stripes. Pottery fragments, flint chips, and straw-like sandals were found in the debris.

This place would come to be named Sandal House due to the large number of sandals found at this location. It would be among dozens of "cliff dwellings" that were discovered by the Wetherill brothers throughout the following years. Solving the mystery had begun regarding who these people were and where they had gone.