Sedona, Arizona: It's not a castle...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."
Montezuma Castle National Monument encompasses 826 acres and supports a highly diverse flora. In spite of the small sizes of the Castle and Well Units, together they support 379 species of plants and about 15 plant associations. This is an impressive amount for a semiarid upland area with less than 12 inches of precipitation per year. Yet the monument is highly disturbed because of prehistoric, historic and current human actions.
Human use of the Montezuma Castle region has been documented since prehistoric times. Ancient Hohokam and Sinagua people practiced extensive agriculture at both units beginning as early as 1200 years ago. They installed irrigation systems, harvested crops, and built communities.
