Montezuma's Castle, Tuzigoot and Jerome

Southern Sinagua farmers began building this 20 room dwelling in the early 1100's. It stands in a recess 100 feet above the valley below. It was assumed to be an Aztec structure by the early settlers and hence the name. A short distance away is Castle A, once an imposing six storey apartment with 45 rooms; however, it has deteriorated badly as it was built at the base and against the cliff and not protected from weathering and was also ravaged by fire which burned the wooden portion of the structure. Beaver Creek was a reliable source of water and the land fertile for these farmers to survive. They vanished in the 1400's for unexplained reasons. The public cannot physically visit the inside of this structure, but Parks' Service has constructed a diorama to depict Sinagua life within.

Today, we visited the Tuzigoot ruins (Apache for "crooked water) another remnant of the Sinagua, a village constructed in 1125-1400. It crowns the summit of a ridge that rises 120 feet above the rich, fertile valley below. This pueblo was 2 storeys high in places with 77 ground-floor rooms. There were few exterior doors; entry was by way of ladders to openings in roofs. The village began as a small cluster of rooms inhabited by 50 persons for a 100 years but soon doubled and doubled again, so that the population grew to about 400. A very well preserved, enormous structure!

We visited Jerome today, too, an old copper, silver and gold mining camp, established in 1883, named for a New York investor, Eugene Murray Jerome, who never visited his namesake. Jerome is known as the mile high town, built on the side of Cleopatra Hill and can be reached by a canyon road that snakes its way up the 5246 feet. As you travel higher, the road gets narrower. In its mining heyday, it became "the wickedest town in the west", a hotbed for prostitution and gambling. Jerome had three major fires between 1897 and 1899, burning out much of the town. In 1918 fires spread out of control over 22 miles of underground mines, burning the inflammable massive pyrite. One of the mine fires continued to burn for twenty years. This prompted the phasing out of underground mining in favor of open pit mining. Mining survived the war years, but declined when copper devalued to 5 cents a pound; mining was finally phased out in 1953. The population dropped to 50. Today, the town, with a population of 343, is a haven for artists, galleries and many eateries. Unfortunately, being the Saturday of Easter weekend, there was no room to park the truck(there were a good many more people than 343), so we will be back next year to explore the shops and cuisine and do our own walkabout! This has been an outstanding Easter weekend! Life is good!


For more pics of these amazing visits, copy and paste below:
http://picasaweb.google.ca/brenda.southwood/MontezumaSCastleTuzigootAndJerome?authkey=Gv1sRgCPv1ru2F-sjWbA#