Day 60 May 3

Montezuma's castle:

The "castle"

The very deep well.  The white things are turtle traps.

Structures at the edge of the "well"

 Here is some information on it from Wikipedia


Montezuma Castle National Monument, located near Camp Verde, Arizona, in the Southwestern United States, features well-preserved cliff-dwellings. They were built and used by the Pre-Columbian Sinagua people, northern cousins of the Hohokam, around 700 CE. It was occupied from approximately 1125-1400 CE, and occupation peaked around 1300 CE. The monument is not at all a castle, but remains to be named "Montezuma Castle", despite it having nothing to do with Aztec Empire nor being named after any Montezuma emperors, such as Montezuma (spelled more properly "Moctezuma"). Many sites in North America are misnamed such as this site, because their discoverers were more interested in the discovery than information or understanding. Several Hopi clans trace their roots to immigrants from the Montezuma Castle/Beaver Creek area. Clan members periodically return to their former homes for religious ceremonies. When European Americans discovered them in the 1860s, they named them for the Aztec emperor (of Mexico) Montezuma II, due to mistaken beliefs that the emperor had been connected to their construction.^[6] (See also Montezuma (mythology).) Neither part of the monument's name is correct. The Sinaqua dwelling was abandoned 100 years before Montezuma was born and the Dwellings were not a castle. It was more like a "prehistoric high rise apartment complex". End of Quote.


The rock formation is from a huge volcanic eruptions that put a thousand feet of ash and rock down in a series of eruptions.  This created layers of conglomerate and tuff that were eroded by Clear Creek creating the valley.  Since different layers eroded at different rates it left large holes in the side of the cliff where they could build the buildings.   The volcanoes that deposited the ash are in Southern Mexico.  When the Indians were there Sunset Crater volcano erupted covering the area with ash, so it was abandoned for a little while.  When they returned the ash actually helped the soil.

We are going to visit Sunset Crater around May 10th.

Next we went to an interesting geologic and archaeological site nearby called Montezuma's Well.  This is a sink hole created by a collapse of a huge limestone cave structure at the water table line.  This allowed the ground water to fill the sinkhole creating a permanent water source in the desert.  The Indians of the area used the outflow to irrigate their fields.  The pictures show some dwellings at the well.   The water is full of lime, which caused the carbon dioxide level in the water to be so high that no fish can live. Turtles can however.  The problem is that someone released their two pet turtles into the well and they out competed the native turtles.  They have caught a hundred or more and removed them to new homes.  When we were there they had just caught one of the last 3 that they think were in the well. 

Notice no walls,  hard to do a sneak attack in a desert.

The area we are in was along the Santa Fe trail and after the civil war it needed protection from local Indians that wanted the white men to leave.  So a fort was built to provide soldiers to protect the area.  It was originally called Fort Lincoln but was changed to Fort Verde.  We decided to visit Fort Verde on the way back to our camp site at Dead Horse Ranch State Park.  The fort was very similar to Fort Stockton we visited in Texas.  It was interesting to see the similarities.  On of the interesting differences was that since they were very far away from central army authority the soldiers gave themselves more room and privacy than was mandated by regulation. 

Maybe a relation?

The fort was part of a complex signaling system of other outposts that used flashing light from mirrors to signal over long distances to keep track of Indian movements.  The Indians eventually learned not to go within sight of any signal station to avoid detection.  Then they set up a system of Telegraph lines.  William Barnes was one of the first telegraph operators. 

Cool stuff found in a old latrine