Tuesday, April 2, 2002

If you are driving to the Grand Canyon from Phoenix, I recommend stopping at Montezuma Castle National Monument.  Montezuma Castle is located 3 miles off Interstate 17.  Use Exit Number 289 and follow the signs. It is definitely worth the visit.  The ruins are only about 300 feet down from the visitors center.  Below is a summary from the National Park Service web site:

It's not a castle and Montezuma was never here.

Nestled into a limestone recess high above the flood plain of Beaver Creek in the Verde Valley stands one of the best preserved cliff dwellings in North America. The five-story, 20-room cliff dwelling served as a "high-rise apartment building" for prehistoric Sinagua Indians over 600 years ago. Early settlers to the area assumed that the imposing structure was associated with the Aztec emperor Montezuma, but the castle was abandoned almost a century before Montezuma was born.

With heightened concern over vandalism of fragile southwestern prehistoric sites, Montezuma Castle became a major factor in the nation's historic preservation movement with its proclamation as a national monument. The Castle was described in the December 1906 establishment proclamation as "of the greatest ethnological and scientific interest."¹

 ^{1   National Park Service, Montezuma Castle National Monument,  accessed on 16 April 2002, available from http://www.nps.gov/moca/index.htm}