Linda's Magic Workshop - Linda Britt Design

We’ve been driving by the exit sign for Montezuma Castle for two years.   We never took the time to stop and explore until this past weekend.   What an interesting place.   Montezuma Castle National Monument is about 50 miles south of Flagstaff, Arizona off I-17.   Big exit sign!   We parked and walked up to the visitor center to be greeted by a Desert Grassland Whiptail Lizard.   It seemed he was just waiting to be photographed!   The Greeter - Desert Grassland Whiptail The path from the Visitor Center was fairly short and the cliff we saw was very high.   The castle is a 5 story, 20 room dwelling built into the cliff recess 100 feet above the valley.   The Southern Sinagua farmers began building in the 1100’s Common Era.   It’s funny how places get named.   The early settlers assumed this place was Aztec in origin and named it Montezuma Castle.   We now know that Montezuma never came this far north from his home in...

Arizona has many beautiful parks and this one is found near Camp Verde AZ.   It is one of 380 parks in the National Park System.   Tuzigoot is an Apache word for crooked water.   This prehistoric community was built between 1125 and 1400 and sits on the summit of a long ridge 120 feet above the Verde Valley.   In some places the original buildings were 2 stories high and there were 77 ground floor rooms.   There were about 50 people settling here in the 1100’s and that apparently doubled in the 1200’s.   The Southern Sinagua people lived by farming corn, beans, squash and cotton using canal irrigation.   We don’t really know why the people left their homes – perhaps overpopulation, disease, conflicts or weather pattern changes.     What we do know is that they were fine artisans and made stone tools – knives, axes, and hammers.    Their pottery was generally undecorated and often coated with a red or black color that was highly polishe...