to the art galleries which are full of interesting and quirky pieces.
Montezuma Castle
I got a mornings flying in with the Central Arizona Flyers before we moved on to Montezuma Castle. This is a pueblo people’s building, another built in the shelter of an overhanging cliff. When the early white explorers saw it they assumed that it was too well built to be a product of the local Indians and thought it had to of Aztec origin and this is the reason for the name.
We could only look at this 5 story 20 room dwelling built high on a vertical cliff and marvel at the agility and the endurance of the builders in the 12th century. The stream below was a reliable source of water and the flood plain provided fertile soil for the squash, beans and corn that was their staple food. Yet this dwelling with its attached lower village of 45 more rooms at the base of the cliff was abandoned by the early 1400s.
Fort Verde
The Fort is the best preserved example left in the southern states. Unlike the movie forts the southern forts had no stockade but relied on good lookouts. Anyway the local tribes avoided big set piece battles preferring to make hit and run raids on supply trains and small settlements or patrols. The soldiers sent to garrison this fort had no idea of how to track the raiders but they employed scouts from local tribes who could. We learned how the tribes were not united but in fact existed in a state perpetual intertribal slave taking and raiding for horses so it was not difficult for the scouts to feel OK about working with the army
. In fact as most of the tribes were crammed into one tiny reservation, this was a way for a young man to acquire wealth and status. In 22 years 11 scouts won the USA’s top award for valour. As this was only 120 years ago the oral memories of the scouts live on in the minds of their descendents and someone had tracked them down, recorded them and edited the stories into a some short films. It was quite eerie listening to a first nation slant on the Indian wars.
When the forts were abandoned at the end of the Indian wars those parts made of wood were dismantled and the timbers reused elsewhere, those made of adobe could not and were just left.
The four we looked at were adobe and were refurbished as living quarters. The commanding officer’s quarters were well furnished and quite genteel in contrast to the bachelor’s quarters which had guns stripped for cleaning on the dining room table and a poker game in the back room.
Tonto Natural Bridge
This was a find. We only stopped here because it was on our route to Phoenix. We had seen other natural arches including the rainbow arch at lake Powell, supposedly the best in the USA and expected this one to be less impressive. We were wrong.. This arch is different.
A different set of geological circumstances resulted in a massive arch of travertine over a river.
The trail down to the bottom of the canyon and back, taxed Carol’s strength to the limit as she is recovering from a severe bout of shingles. We walked over the top of the bridge and dropped down into the canyon.
Apparently the water flowing from the top of the bridge is still rich
in the mineral travertine and the bridge is still being built one drop at a time. Although there are no signs of first nation dwellings it is hard to believe that this site with it’s reliable water supply and convenient caves was never inhabited.
We are sitting in the rain in Payson at 5000 feet glad that the forecast snow level has been moved upwards to 7000 feet. It has been a long time since we have had some serious rain but we might get 2 inches today. This will produce "gulley washers" as the soil does not absorb the rain very well and it floods off into theses temporary rivers.
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