Three More Ancient Sites

I had read an on-line article about the best Native American ancestral sites in Arizona and Montezuma Castle was one of them. This is another National Monument and we visited it on Thursday.

These cliff dwellings are along Wet Beaver Creek, one of a handful of waterways that flow year round in Arizona.

The area had some huge old sycamores, I couldn’t get the whole tree in the picture.

To protect the main structure this is as close as you were allowed to approach.

I appreciated that they were also protecting the trees.

The “castle” wasn’t the only dwelling at the site, just the best preserved. These homes were built around the same time as Tuzigoot, and were also part of what is now called the Sinagua culture. Sinagua means without water, but the ruins we saw were all along valleys with water.

Since you could no longer go up into the “castle” the National Park Service created this scale model which is on display at the site. The people who lived here also moved on around 1400. The Hopi claim them as ancestors and say the migration had spiritual roots.

Not far from Montezuma Castle is Montezuma Well. I found this one of the most fascinating sites we visited. Like the castle, the well has nothing to do with Montezuma and was home to people of the Sinagua culture.

About 1.6 million gallons of water flow up through the bottom and out through a tunnel on the side each day. The water is almost constant in volume and temperature (about 74 degrees F). The water coming up into the well has been making its way from the surface of the Colorado Plateau for more than 10,000 years. It comes up with such force that divers cannot descend more than 55 feet, where they meet a false bottom of boiling sand. Researchers have been able to send instruments another 65 feet below that.

There is a trail that leads down inside the bowl…

where you could see the where the water disappears into the tunnel dissolved through the side of the caldron.

Right by that opening was a small dwelling.

There is also a larger structure up on the wall on the opposite side of the well.

One wonders if they drank the water and what effect it might have had. There are no fish or amphibians because the dissolved carbon dioxide levels are 80 times normal. Only five unique species live here, a diatom (a one-celled plant), an amphipod which eats the diatoms, and a water scorpion and fresh water leech which feed on the amphipods. There is also a tiny snail. Pondweeds grow on the edges and ducks visit. In addition to the high levels of dissolved carbon dioxide, there are high levels of arsenic in the water. Arsenic has shown up in bones of animals that lived here.

Another trail led down the outside of the bowl where there were more ruins.

This is the outlet of the tunnel.

The people who lived here diverted some of that water through very narrow but deep canals to their crops. What a mixed blessing this water was, life giving, but mildly poisonous.

The brochure we got at Montezuma Castle that had information on that site and on Montezuma Well had a map that showed another nearby site, The V Bar V Heritage Site, but had no information on it. Unlike Montezuma Castle and Montezuma Well which are managed by the National Park Service (Department of the Interior), The V Bar V Heritage Site is managed by the National Forest Service (Department of Agriculture). We asked the docent about that one and she said it had petroglyphs, so we decided to go there the next day.

About all that’s left of the ranch is this beautiful chimney, built from local materials along with the ranch house in 1932.

A short walk down a manicured trail took you to a red rock wall with more than a thousand petroglyphs! Besides the number and excellent condition of these petroglyphs the site is unusual in the number of birds depicted. It will have a new name soon, The Crane Petroglyph and V Bar B Heritage Site. Then you’ll know from the name that this place is about petroglyphs.

The site is also unusual because all of the petroglyphs are of one style, called the Beaver Creek Style.

It also has a very elaborate panel with elements that are thought to be part of a solar calendar, marking the summer and winter solstices and the spring and fall equinoxes. There also may be figures indicating spring planting times.

This part of Arizona has proved to be beautiful and has a wealth of archeological sites. We have loved it.