Historic America

Cahokia was a Native American city that rivaled medieval London in size, built right along the Mississippi River in what is now Illinois. Families can climb Monks Mound, one of the largest earthen structures ever built in the Americas, and stand where a civilization once thrived. It is a half-day adventure that changes the way kids think about ancient America forever.

Chaco Culture National Historical Park preserves the greatest concentration of ancient puebloan architecture in North America, including massive stone great houses aligned with precision to the sun and moon. Families who make the long drive into this high desert canyon find a place that rewards curiosity at every age, from toddlers touching a thousand-year-old wall to teenagers grasping the scale of a civilization that built without metal tools or wheeled carts. After dark, one of the darkest skies in the American Southwest turns the canyon into a natural planetarium.

Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde is the largest cliff dwelling in North America, tucked into a sandstone alcove in southwestern Colorado and built by Ancestral Pueblo people around 800 years ago. Standing inside its towers and kivas, families get a rare chance to walk through a real ancient city and wonder at the people who called this canyon home.