From Inkstain (John Fleck):
Lissa and I stopped this morning at Mesa Verde’s “Mummy Lake”, more recently renamed “Far View Reservoir,” on account of apparently there was never any mummy. Now we learn, thanks to science, that there was probably never a reservoir or lake, either…
Joseph Castro did a nice writeup on the research, which is how I found out about it. Castro explains that Benson and colleagues concluded that there likely would never have been enough water to fill it, and the features originally thought of as canals to collect and distribute water would likely have plugged up with sediment or leaked over cliffs if they were actually used to collect or distribute water.
More San Juan River Basin coverage here.