Montezuma Castle National Monument and Red Rock country

Well, I am way behind in my posts. I still have a couple more postings about our stay in Phoenix and we are now in Tucson. Oh, well, put it down to busy days sightseeing, putting in my 24 hours a week of work for WebAssign, and a slow internet connection.

Montezuma National monument and Montezuma's well are on the way to Sedona. We very nearly did not make it as we had some "discussions" about why we needed to go to Sedona. I wanted to go and guess who was not very keen!! I won by being insistent about it and boy was he happy at the end of the day!

When these dwellings were first discovered it was thought that this could only have been built by someone like the Aztecs and hence the name Montezuma's castle.

If I was awed by the cliff dwellings at Tonto National monument, there are no words to describe my reaction to what I saw in this place. The sheer ingenuity and perseverance of these people is mind boggling - to build a 20 room 5 storey structure in this limestone cliff - well, what more can I say!

There is plenty written about these cliff dwellings that you could read by googling "Montezuma Castle National Monument". So I shall not go into it here. Suffice it to say that this was another one of those days when I came away humbled and awed by what had been achieved by these people with so little resources at hand. They made the most of their mind, body, and spirit, and lived an honest, simple life; ever mindful of what was there for them to take in order to live.

walkway leading to the dwellings - cliffs to the right

Cliff dwellings

Line drawing of structure

Model displaying life inside the dwellings

 View of the dwellings from a different angle

You can see other entrances in the limestone cliff above and in the two photos below

Beaver creek at bottom of cliff - obvious water source for the cliff dwellers

morning sun reflecting off the waters of the creek

I just loved the form of this tree

About a 10 minute drive from Montezuma's castle is Montezuma Well.
This sink hole was formed when a large underground cavern flooded.  There is ample water supply year-round from underground springs and hence the Indians built dwellings in the cliffs and around the well and near the water surface (as you can see from the photos below).

It is said that some 1,400,000 gallons of water is supplied to the well from the two underground springs. The water from this well exits through a gap in the cliffs on the other side, and the Indians used this water to build an irrigation system.

Notice the dwellings on the side of the cliff

View from the other side of the well

You could go down to the water level via crude steps cut into the side of the cliff.

Going down to the water level

and going down some more

and still making my way down

View from down below

More excavated ruins closer to the water level

You can see people up above in the 11 o'clock position and down below at the center of the photo

pathway leading to the gap where the water comes out of the well

this is where the water comes out on the other side of the cliff

John making his way back - you can get an idea of the sheer height of these rock walls