More Travels-Verde Valley Retirement

Verde Valley Retirement

"We'll be back in the desert today," said Andy, as we prepared to leave Flagstaff for the Verde Valley. "You can wear shorts again, even if Flagstaff recorded 27 degrees this morning."
By the time we reached Montezuma's Well at 8:45 a.m., it was already 75 degrees.

With plenty of water, the Southern Sinagua at Montezuma's
Well irrigated fields of cotton and agave.

 Ranger Case and Volunteer Barbara welcomed us to Montezuma's Well in the comfortable early morning hours. Standing in the shadow of the Ranger Station, we chatted a-politically about government shut-downs, health insurance, unemployment and volunteering.
"Can you collect unemployment if parks close for government shut-down?" asked Andy.
"I don't know," replied the ranger. "I never tried it before."
We all shook our heads over the wrangling in Washington.
 Montezuma's Well is probably the most studied natural spring in the world. It holds 15 million gallons of water. The water percolates up through Travertine limestone and replenishes the natural sink at a constant rate. The water fell as rain water atop the Mogollon Rim to the north 10,000 years ago. Over millennia it has percolated slowly through rock until it reached a vertical wall of volcanic basalt that acts like a dam, forcing it back up to the huge underground cavern sinkhole that is Montezuma's Well. Then it empties into Beaver Creek at a constant rate so that about ten percent of the Well is replenished every day.

No bottom can be ascertained for
Montezuma's Well, and the water stays
at a constant level all year long.

No fish can live because of high levels of carbon dioxide from the dissolved Travertine rock. But Montezuma's Well swarms with leeches, water scorpions, amphipods, snails and diatoms that are found nowhere else in the world. During the day the amphipods, crustaceans that look like tiny shrimp, feed in the center of the Well, out of the reach of ducks. At night, while larger predators sleep, endemic leeches rise to feed on the amphipods. The amphipods flee to the edges on the surface, where another predator, the water scorpion, waits. At this lovely oasis in the harsh desert, the nightly struggle between life and death goes on.
Ancestral Puebloans channeled the water as it emptied into Beaver Creek to irrigate their fields on the mesa. Evidence of up to seven miles of irrigation ditches lined with rocks have been unearthed in the area. These Indians built more than 30 rooms along the rim. Their pueblo here was one of 40 to 60 that dotted the valley.
Modern Hopi and Pueblo people still consider this land of their ancestors as sacred. They tell stories of "the monster of the Well" that protected the sacred water. Andy and I took the trail down to the outlet. There a man and his Native American wife plunged their arms up to the shoulders in the 74-degree water.
"It feels purifying and sacred," she said to him.
As we left, Andy whispered, "He drank some water before you got here. I guess it's pure, but I certainly wouldn't take a chance. The well looks polluted."
A sign on top explained that the water in the Well itself contained high amounts of arsenic. Bones of people and animals studied by archaeologists showed those who consumed quantities of water from the Well, not Beaver Creek, probably suffered greatly.
We read the informative signs. The Sinagua peoples who lived here raised cotton and agave, a desert plant used for fiber. As skilled weavers, they probably traded textiles for goods and products from hundreds of miles distant. With water abundant, it seems they had an advanced culture.

One of the best preserved ruins in the
Southwest, Montezuma's Castle
earned its name from its Aztec reputation.

Andy would choose Montezuma's Castle for his home site though. This valley of the Beaver Creek seems verdant and protected, probably why the ancients chose it as home. Cicadas sang to us as we walked the paths. Flowers in yellow and purple bloomed everywhere. A hot sun beat down, but the grasses and sycamore trees bent in the breeze. It was a pleasant valley indeed with the reliable, albeit dirty looking, water of Beaver Creek in ready supply.
Southern Sinagua farmers settled here in the early 1100's and began building a five-story, 20-room dwelling in a cliff alcove 100 feet above the valley floor. So well built and so protected from the elements, it has stood for more than 600 years and is one of the best-preserved prehistoric structures in the Southwest. Montezuma's Castle got its name when early settlers marveled at the structure and assumed it was Aztec in origin.
The Southern Sinagua who lived here relied on a diet of corn, but there is evidence that they mined a salt deposit a few miles from present-day Camp Verde and traded salt widely throughout the region.
Fine artisans, the Southern Sinagua crafted reddish-brown pottery, undecorated but highly polished, bone awls and needles, woven cotton garments and ornaments of shell, turquoise and a local red stone called argillite.

High on a ridge in the Verde Valley, the Tuzigoot ruins
tower over the surrounding landscape.

Lots of tourists milled around the cliff dwelling, reading the signs and marveling at the accomplishments, and stood near the diorama and in the Visitor Center. "I never knew anything about this," said one older lady. We directed her to Montezuma's Well and Tuzigoot.
Our next stop was Tuzigoot National Monument. Apache for "crooked water," this Southern Sinagua settlement developed in stages between 1125 A.D. and 1400 A.D. The ruins sit on top of the summit of a long ridge that rises 120 feet above the Verde Valley.
"That's the original pueblo," explained Volunteer Don from the rooftop. He showed us the inside room, his favorite cooling-off spot. "The roof was raised in here by the WPA in the 1930's so tourists could walk through. It's not authentic at all because the Sinagua men were only 5'4" and women, 5'1". We chatted about volunteerism and shared the blog site.  "Keep active," Don advised. "You have to keep your mind stimulated."
"Good advice," I told him. "If I were a Sinagua woman, I'd be dead."

Steep trails lead up to the top rooms
at Tuzigoot ruins.

"Yes, you would," he grinned. "A quarter of children born then died before they were two years old, and another 35 percent died before they reached their 20's. If you lived to be in your 30's, you'd stay in the lower rooms, because you'd have such bad arthritis, you couldn't climb, and no one lived beyond 40."
As today's retirees, we all chuckled.
Tuzigoot began as a small cluster of rooms for about 50 people. The original pueblo of 1125 A.D. was two stories high in some places with 77 ground-floor rooms entered via ladders through openings in the roofs. In the 1200's the population doubled. By 1300, it had doubled again as refugee farmers fled the drought of outlying areas. Then the pueblo probably had 86 ground-floor rooms and 15 second-story rooms for 225 people. No one knows the real reason why Tuzigoot was abandoned by 1400, more than a hundred years before the first Europeans rode into the valley.
Volunteer Don also told us that young children were buried under the dirt floor of the family's pueblo room, probably so their spirits would remain or so the parents could retain the promise of fertility.

Carpets of yellow flowers blanket the hillside
above the marsh at Tuzigoot.

Adults who died were placed with a few personal possessions in the soft dirt of the trash mitten outside.
Andy asked, "I've never had a chance to ask this, but what about sanitation? I heard somewhere that they went inside their houses."
Volunteer Don laughed. "No, there was a room at each end of the pueblo," he said, "but, of course someone had to clean it out periodically."
What a chore that must have been! I sure hope he earned a whole lot of extra corn.
Before we left Tuzigoot, we walked the quarter-mile Marsh path. Butterflies glided by every few steps, and with all the wild flowers, the honeybees kept up a constant communication. Part of a cattle ranch at one time and damaged by tailings from the copper mining industry, the marsh is now protected by the U.S. Park Service and is recovering. Beavers make their homes in the fresh water, birds winter in the area, and larger mammals frequent the pools and hide in the lush vegetation. No wonder the people of Tuzigoot chose this spot as their home in the desert.

A private trail with public access, the Adobe Jack Trailhead
offers hikers spectacular scenery in Sedona.

We headed on up the mountain to the ancient mining town of Jerome. "You bought a copper bracelet here many, many years ago," said Andy, as he looked for a place to park. The steep streets teemed with tourists. "There was just about nothing here then except a few hippies and a whole bunch of tumbled-down buildings." Now Jerome is an artist colony and Western hang-out with cool, little souvenir shops.Our next stop was Sedona, a classy town set in the canyon of red rocks at 4,500 feet. A cruel twist of fate or sight-seeing driving took us past a local craft fair. "Let's browse," said Andy, pulling in to park. But even though I found plenty of wonderful things I could cram into my suitcase, I wasn't allowed to shop!

Red rocks rise behind
the Chapel of the Holy Cross.

 In Sedona, Adobe Jack Trailhead pullout provided a viewpoint for pictures of the valley with its red rocks.

Simple and modern, the Chapel of the Holy Cross in Sedona
is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Much of the area around Sedona is undeveloped. "That's because it's Coconino National Forest," said Andy. He headed to the Chapel of the Holy Cross. Built in 1956, it is on the register of National Historic Places. Incredibly beautiful in its simplicity, the Chapel occupies a unique setting against the red rock canyon. The modern building dominates the point of rock, and the cactus landscaping is magnificent. Event the usually stick-like ocotillo were bending with the weight of green leaves.

In the late afternoon shadows bring out the color of the red
rock cliffs around Sedona, Arizona.

Our last stop around 4:00 p.m. was Yavapai Viewpoint. Shadows crisscrossed the red canyon walls, but the formations stood out sharply against a cloudless sky. Even in late September flowers bloomed everywhere. Sedona is my kind of first-class town. "I could retire here," I told Andy.
"You couldn't afford it," he said.