MONTEZUMA'S CASTLE AND MONTEZUMAS WELL

Monday April 20

Montezuma's Castle and Well were misnamed by the discoverers who thought they were Aztec ruins.  They are NOT.  They are remains from the ancient Sinagua Culture.

Montezuma Castle is situated  90 feet up a sheer limestone cliff . It is one of the best-preserved cliff dwellings in North America because of placement in a natural alcove that protects it from exposure to the elements. The precariousness of the dwelling's location and its immense scale - almost 4,000 square feet across five stories - suggest that the Sinagua were daring builders and skilled engineers. Access into the structure was by a series of portable ladders, which made it difficult for enemy tribes to penetrate the natural defense of the vertical barrier.

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The walls of Montezuma Castle are of early stone-and-mortar masonry, constructed almost entirely from chunks of limestone found at the base of the cliff, as well as mud and clay from the creek bottom. The ceilings of the rooms used sectioned timbers from the Arizona sycamore.

Evidence of permanent dwellings like those at Montezuma Castle begins to appear in the archaeological record of Arizona’s Verde Valley about 1050 AD. But some of the Sinagua culture may have occupied the region as early as 700 AD.  Construction of the Castle itself is thought to have begun around this time, though the building efforts probably occurred gradually, level-by-level, over many generations.  The Castle housed between 30 and 50 people in at least 20 separate rooms. Another segment of the same cliff wall suggests the existence of an even larger dwelling around the same time but only the stone foundations have survived

 

model of what it would have been like

The latest estimated date of occupation for any Sinagua site comes from Montezuma Castle, around 1425 AD. After this date the Sinagua people appear to have abandoned their permanent settlements and migrated elsewhere. The reasons for abandonment of these sites are unclear, but drought, resource depletion, and clashes with the newly arrived Yavapai people have been suggested. Due to heavy looting in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, very few original artifacts survive from Montezuma Castle.

 

 

From the Castle we moved to the well and followed a path up to the top of the large sinkhole.

 

Montezuma Well is a natural limestone sinkhole through which 1,500,000 gallons of water emerges daily from an underground spring.

 

The Well measures 386 feet in diameter from rim to rim and contains a near-constant volume of spring water even in times of severe drought. Montezuma Well's steady outflow has been used for irrigation since the 8th century. Part of a prehistoric canal is preserved near the park's picnic ground, and portions of the canal's original route are still in use today.

 

Montezuma Well is geologically very similar to the sinkholes found in Florida, a limestone cave that has collapsed to expose its subterranean water source.

Archaeological evidence suggests that humans have lived in the Verde Valley for at least 10,000 years. The ruins of several prehistoric dwellings are scattered in and around the rim of the Well. Their inhabitants belonged to several cultures that are believed to have occupied the Verde Valley between 700 and 1425 CE, the most prominent being the cultural group archaeologists have termed the Sinagua.   Ruins of a "pit house" in the traditional Hohohakem style dates to about 1050 CE. More than 50 countable "rooms" are found inside the park boundaries. Some were used for purposes other than living space, including food storage and religious ceremonies.

ruins around the well

The Sinagua people, and possibly earlier cultures, farmed the land surrounding the Well using its constant outflow as a reliable source of irrigation. Beginning about 700 CE, the Well's natural drainage into the immediately adjacent Wet Beaver Creek was diverted into a man-made canal running parallel to the creek, segments of which still conduct the outflow today. The prehistoric canal, estimated at nearly seven miles in length, drained into a network of smaller lateral canals downstream supplying acres of farmland with water. Much of the canal route is still visible.

Where the water emerges into the canal

the ancient canal still full of water