Montezuma's Castle

Today we visited Montezuma's Castle (a national monument) which, like Scotty's Castle in Death Valley, is not a castle and was never lived in by the person it was named for. The early modern day settlers who first saw it mistakenly assumed it was an Aztec structure which is how it came to carry Montezuma's name. Somehow the name stuck.

Montezuma's Castle was built by the Sinagua people in the early 1100's in the Verde Valley. They started with natural caves found high up on a sheer rock wall near some fertile land along a creek and then built walls to close off the face and form individual rooms. It is five stories and has 20 rooms and they say it is still about 90% intact. It was reached by a series of ladders which could be pulled up if there was a threat.

The Sinagua lived in the area for about 300 years but sometime in the 1400's they just seemed to disappear and no one knows if they died out or moved on.