pokealongwithTommyandOlga: Montezuma Castle National Monument

With this posting I started at the top. This morning when we got up and were drinking our coffee, we were looking around at the park and noticed this ballon at a hill going to another section of the park. We didn't know if it was just sitting there or if somebody was about to go up and suddenly it started moving. Because there are hills and valleys, we kind of lost it but it was there for a while. We decided that it was somebody at the park that were practicing for the Ballon Festival in Albuquerque New Mexico next month.

Up, up, up and Away. After a while we lost site of it.

It was a dreary rainy day and we were sitting around but I felt like I needed to do something so I decided to go find something to do. Tommy didn't want to do anything so I went on to Camp Verde, trying to find Montezuma Castle. It was raining a little but since it doesn't rain too much in Arizona, I decided that the rain wouldn't last. I went on and saw a few things on the road but since I was by myself I didn't take many pictures.

I finally got to a road that would take me where I wanted to go.

I followed the road and it seemed like I would never get there. It was further than I thought and it was in the middle of nowhere. I wondered if there would be anything going on out there because I didn't see much traffic heading or coming back from that direction.

I got there and there were a few vechicles, but not too many. This is the entrance to the Monument. Last year when we were in Arkansas, Larry and I had turned senior pass age so we went to a center and got our Senior Pass. I didn't have to have Tommy along to get in.

There wasn't a whole lot to take pictures of but it was pretty interesting. Rising 100 feet above the Beaver Creek floodplain, Montezuma Castle ia a testimony to the resilience and innocations of a people called the "Sinagua," named after the Spanish term for the San Francisco Peaks, the "Sierra Sin Agua'---"the mountain without water." Montezuma Castle is one of the best-preserved cliff dwellings in the United States. It is 90 percent original despite years of unauthorized excavation, visitation and even one attempt to blow apart a wall to collect artifacts.

Montezuma Castle was not an isolated structure where people lived generation after generation, having little contact with neighbors. The Castle instead was a small, but very dramatic, part of a large community of people spread up and down the waterways of the Verde Valley. As many as 6,000 to 8,000 people may have lived in the valley in small villages no more than two miles apart. Montezuma Castle is located along Beaver Creek, possibly a final leg in a major prehistoric trade route from northern Arizona. People following this trail were seeking copper, salt, cotton, argillite and other minerals.

Montezuma Castle is built into a deep alcove with masonry rooms added in phases. A thick, substantial roof of sycamore beams, reeds, grasses and clay often served as the floor of the next room built on top. Entrance to most areas was usually from a hole in the roof; a ladder made access easier.

The 19 rooms could have housed 35 to 50 people, conserving precious farmland near the creek. Around the corner was "Castle A," a site with 45 to 50 rooms that also hugged the limestone cliff. These people were certainly related, sharing food, land, friendhips; all ties that bind a community.

There is little evidence of conflict or warfare but perhaps people felt more secure living in the Castle. The series of ladders used to climb to the site could be pulled in for the night and there is a panoramic view of the river and valley from the top parapet level. A small ruin above the Castle, on the top of the cliff, allows views of the entire countryside; a sentry would have advance warning of anyone entering the area.

Although there is a great magnificence to this prehistoric American Indian structure---and the Aztec emperor Moctezuma II was never here, the Castle was abandoned at least a century before he was born.

Starting around 1380 to 1400, the Sinagua began moving from the area, probably joining relatives in large pueblos to the east. As more explantiona are offered for their departure, more questions arise. Stress factors may have included prolonged drought, disease, and nutrient-depleted soil from growing corn. The departure from Montezuma Castle and surrounding ancestral lands had to have been very emotional. The ties to the land were over centuries and generations---the decision to leave could only have been out of necessity.

This picture has glare in it that I didn't realize but it also has some information on it.

The cutaway diagram shows how the interior of the Castle was constructed. In 1874, some of the first Euro-American explorers to see Montezuma Castle were veterans of the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). When they entered the Verde Valley and saw the great cliff dwellings and large pueblos with standing walls, they didn't believe the local indigenous people had the knowledge or ability to construct such imposing structures and so attributed them to the Aztecs, whose magnificent ruins they had seen in Mexico.

Very few original artifacts remained in 1906 when President Teddy Roosevelt declared Montezuma Castle a National Monument, but protection of the structure for future generations was assured.