Monday, July 9, 2012

Montazuma's Well & Castle plus Tuzigoot

While in Arizona, Darren was interested in seeing some Indian ruins.  We stayed the night near Sedona and found three different ruins nearby.  Our first stop in the morning was Montazuma's Well.  We were thinking it was going to be well, a well, one that you would send a bucket down and get water.  Maybe at one time it was something similar but now it is a spring fed hole where one million gallons flows through here each day.
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On the wall of the cliff above the spring fed lake were the remnants of cliff homes.


Nearby is also Montezuma's Castle.  This building was built  high into the cliff face and was constructed by the Sinagua tribe.  The castle contained 20 rooms and was built almost 900 years ago!  It's amazing things this old can be found in the United States when when most people think our history only goes back 400 years or so.

 

From Montezuma's castle we drove over to Tuzigoot.  Tuzigood is an Apache word for crooked water.  It is a 2 to 3 story Sinagua dwelling which dates back to about 900 years around the time Montezuma's Castle was also built.

 
 

It was a very interesting history I had never known much about before our random stops in Arizona.




1 comment:

Jayna said...

I've been so busy focusing on Mayan ruins everywhere else, I never thought about seeing the Indian ruins in the US. LOL!