Located an hour and a half north of Phoenix sits the third National Monument dedicated to preserving Native American culture.
Montezuma Castle.
It is important to note that the monument’s name is not historically correct. When the ruins were first observed in the 1860’s European-Americans mistakenly believed the structure was linked to the famous Aztec emperor Montezuma. We know now that the dwelling has no connection to the Aztecs. However, the name still stuck.
Montezuma Castle was home to the Sinagua people. Although it is believed that people inhabited this land much earlier, the Sinagua began building these more permanent living structures such as this around 1050.
The name Sinagua comes from the Spanish “sin agua” which means “without water”. Despite the name, these people had plenty of water. For example, you can see just how close the nearest water source is to the dwelling itself. Water plays a huge role in the ability for people to settle down in any area.
There are many reasons as to why a group of people chose to build such a housing structure in the location that it is. It offered protection from any threat by being situated 90 feet up a sheer limestone cliff. This height also allowed the people to escape the annual flooding of their nearby water source, Beaver Creek. The dwelling faces the South, which means that the structure was warm in the winter and cool in the summer. For the Sinagua people, this location was the ideal place to build a multi-family home.
Montezuma Castle is actually a collection of 20 rooms, similar to that of a modern-day apartment building. This five-story dwelling housed between 30 and 50 people at any given time. When visiting places like this, it is important to think about the things that make a house a home. Including the people that inhibit it and the memories created within. The Sinagua people had all of the making to make this dwelling a home.
When this dwelling was discovered, it had long been abandoned. The Sinagua people did not disappear but migrated away from the area over time. It is believed that the dwelling was abandoned around 1400. While the exact reasoning behind the migration is not known, some of the possible explanations include environmental change, overpopulation, social conflict or religious reasons.
In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt had enough foresight to declare this historic site as a National Monument. While very few artifacts remained in the dwelling itself due to looting, the decision to protect this site assured the continued protection of one of the best-preserved cliff dwellings in North America.
Shortly thereafter, Montezuma Castle quickly became a destination for America’s first car-bound tourists. These early visitors were allowed access to the structure by climbing a series of ladders up the limestone cliff. You can only imagine the extensive damage and vandalism that this caused. Access to the ruins was discontinued in 1951 to further preserve this historical site.
Approximately 350,000 people a year visit this National Monument and look into the past and what it might have been like to live in a place like this hundreds of years ago.
Every time that I have the opportunity to visit a place like this, I am both extremely happy and grateful that someone had the thought to preserve both land and historical sites. My time in Arizona has been well spent learning about cultures like this. It is important to have an understanding, appreciation and respect for those that made their impact on these lands far before us.