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Montezuma's Castle & Tuzigoot

The hills surrounding Sedona contain cliff dwellings and pueblo ruins from people who lived here hundreds of years ago. During our few days in this beautiful red rock country, we visited two of those intriguing sites: Montezuma's Castle and Tuzigoot.

Montezuma's Castle is a cliff-dwelling that was built over a period of 300 years, beginning in the early 1100’s.

It is believed that between 30 to 50 people once resided within the 5-story, 20-room structure.

Another 100 people (or so) lived at the base of the cliff in a bigger pueblo that was 6-stories tall, with 45 rooms. All that remains below, however, are various holes in the cliff, some collapsed walls, and a partially reconstructed foundation.

Sebastian in front of the cliff base:

A close-up of the cliff face:

The name “Montezuma’s Castle” was bestowed by 19th century European-American explorers who mistakenly thought that the stone dwellings had been built by the Aztecs from Mexico, so they used the name of the 16th century Aztec leader.

The real builders are known as the “Sinagua” (which means “without water” in Spanish), a name given by a U.S. historian in 1930—not the name that the people called themselves. The Sinagua arrived in this valley around 1125 A.D., joining the agricultural community that had been farming here for at least several hundred years.

Although Montezuma’s Castle was declared a National Monument in 1906, looting and unauthorized excavations continued until the 1920’s. By then, portions of the site threatened to collapse due to dynamite blasts and numerous holes in the floors. Local contractors refused to bid on repair projects because funds were limited and the job was considered too dangerous.

Luckily, a park ranger (Frank Pinkley) and a park custodian (Martin Jackson) cared enough to devote three summers to repairing the structure themselves. They even used their own money when the limited government funds were gone. From 1923 to 1925, with the help of three crew members from the local Apache-Yavapai community, they replastered the front wall with mud from the local riverbed, restored doorways and floors, cleaned the interior and scrubbed hundreds of graffiti marks off the walls.

Here are two National Park Service photos of the site while repairs were being made:

After the restoration, visitors were allowed to climb the ladders and explore the interior of Montezuma’s Castle.

Here are two more National Park Service photos showing visitors in the 1940’s:

The building of nearby Interstate 17, however, led to a surge of visitors that was too overwhelming for the fragile ruins, and visitor access was restricted in 1951. Today, we could only stand below the cliff-dwelling and peer up at the exterior.

With the wonders of modern technology, however, we could take a “virtual tour” of the interior via an interactive video presentation in the Visitor’s Center. Here is Sebastian, receiving a tour:

About 25 miles away in the same fertile valley was another prehistoric pueblo, Tuzigoot, that allowed visitors to climb into the interior rooms. Rather than being built into a cliff wall, however, Tuzigoot covered the mound of a small hill:

By having their pueblo on a hilltop, these Sinagua residents had a good line of sight to other hilltop pueblos and could save the fertile lands below for farming crops of squash, corn and beans.

Between 1000 and 1400, about 40 pueblos flourished in this area, but Tuzigoot is the only one that has been fully excavated. The work was performed in the 1930’s under the CWA.

Like Montezuma’s Castle, the Tuzigoot pueblo grew slowly over several hundred years, with more rooms being added as the population increased. At its peak, there were about 225 people living here, with 86 rooms on the ground level and 15 second story rooms.

Inside one of the lower, recreated rooms:

Here I am with Sebastian and Genevieve on top of the roof—the highest point of Tuzigoot:

We had a 360 degree view of the surrounding valley:

For reasons that remain a mystery, the Sinagua left this area in the 1400’s—abandoning both Tuzigoot and Montezuma’s Castle. No separate Sinagua tribe exists today.

The Hopi community claims the Sinagua as their ancestors, and they believe that the Sinagua migrated further north and blended with the Hopi people.

At the Tuzigoot Visitor’s Center, Ranger John Reid was very generous of his time in answering our questions. Here he is with Sebastian and Genevieve:

The kids took the time to earn Junior Ranger badges at both Tuzigoot and Montezuma’s Castle. Of course, Ben and I received the benefit of learning and exploring right along with them—definitely a “parent perk.”

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