In 1888, two ranchers sought after stray cattle, and stumbled upon the remains of a thirteenth-century cliff-dwelling of the Ancestral Pueblo people. According to the legend of discovery, a tree grew from in front of the remnants of the Native American dwellings to the top of the mesa. The ranchers labeled the tree as a spruce, thus the cliff-dwelling became known as the Spruce Tree House.

This cliff-dwelling reached several stories high, and housed about sixty to ninety people in its 129 rooms. The Ancestral Pueblo people also constructed eight kivas, which served as centers of their religious ceremonies. The population supported themselves by farming on the mesa-top, which they reached by climbing the cliff-wall using man-made holes. Those who did not farm and harvest the crops worked to preserve the goods to sustain the community in times of drought. Several generations resided at the Spruce Tree House until the Ancestral Pueblo people left the region in the early fourteenth century.

The National Park Service now protects and preserves the archeological site of the Spruce Tree House within the Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado. The National Park Service has teamed-up with the Architectural Conservation Laboratory in their preservation efforts, to identify and document which areas of the structure are in most need of protection from deterioration. Their efforts have resulted in some of the best preserved cliff-dwellings on the continent. The archeological site can be seen by taking a short half-mile hike from the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum.