Thousands of visitors thronged to Mesa Verde National Park Friday, to see with their own eyes what media photographers had already shown them.

Mesa Verde reopened at 6 a.m. after being closed since July 20 because of the Bircher Fire, which burned 19,000 acres within the park and 4,000 acres of private, BLM and Ute Mountain Ute tribal land.

"There’ve been jillions of visitors — far more than on a regular day," said Gian Mercurio, a park ranger on duty at the entrance. Statistically, park visitation reaches its peak on the first Tuesday in August, and Friday’s visitation may approach historic numbers, even though many group tours had been canceled. Admission was free, allowing everyone to see the burned area. Tickets for the ruins tours were sold at regular prices.

Ranger Max Deschel reported that 100 people were lined up to enter the Far View Visitor Center when it opened at 8:30 a.m., and other rangers were talking about augmenting the ruins tours to accommodate as many visitors as possible.

Recreational vehicles had been parked in the lot just north of the entrance Thurs-day night, occupied by curious travelers whose travel plans had been affected by the fire.

Locals lined up with tourists, and some of them were greeted personally by Park Superintendent Larry Wiese. Wiese and other gate attendants were handing out packets of information that included a fluorescent green sheet of "Important Safety Information."

The reduced speed limit allowed the park to reopen without guardrails, which were left resting on the shoulder of the road after the posts supporting them burned. A sign warned of 6 miles without guardrails, and park officials reported that 11,000 feet of guardrail would need to be replaced.

The speed limit wasn’t a hindrance to most drivers, who crept through the burned area, gaping at the charred landscape and snapping photos out their vehicle windows where pullouts weren’t available. The photo opportunities were many and varied, from closeups of charred trees and soot-blackened boulders, to panoramic views of black and gray, spiked with towering dust devils and plumes of smoke rising from the Bircher Fire and more recent lightning strikes.

The visitors’ reactions were varied as well.

"The boys thought it smelled good and the girls thought it smelled bad," chuckled Longmont resident Jeanette Schow, visiting the park with her husband Peter and children Paul and Marie. The Schows had been forced to cancel a planned visit and instead went to New Mexico. When they learned the park would reopen Friday morning, they changed their plans once again to visit Mesa Verde.

"It’s just part of nature," Schow said, "but the color of the trees was really dramatic."

Giles and Silvie Dussart, from Reims, France, considered themselves very fortunate that their long-term plans had called for a visit on Friday. Members of Silvie’s family had previously visited the park, and after seeing their photos, the Dussarts knew they wanted to come. Their trip also included Rocky Mountain and Dinosaur national parks, and they were planning to go on to Aspen and Vail.

"We are very lucky," Giles Dussart said. "We flew in yesterday and understood that the park was reopening today, and that the ruins were not burned."

The fire, they said, "was a pity, a disaster." But they offered hope for the future.