March 29…. Montezuma’s Revenge?

We visited Montezuma Castle National Monument today, and then went on to Montezuma Well, a secondary location together with the monument.

Montezuma Castle is the name of a cliff dwelling in the Verde River valley, along Wet Beaver Creek. And no, I did not make that creek name up.

It’s a well preserved site up in a hole in the cliff wall, built and occupied from 1200 to about 1400, by the same Sinagua people that built Tuzigoot and even Homolovi back east from here, where we went last week. It was deserted by 1400 when all of the other ancient villages in this area were abandoned. The people moved north and east and eventually became the Hopi tribe.

The inside of the dwelling was closed to public access in 1951 due to preservation and safety concerns.

The name Montezuma was given to these sites by early explorers of this area, possibly because it reminded them of the Aztec Empire cities much further south, but these places have nothing to do with the Aztecs.

The well is an enormous pit in the desert, sunken into the layers of limestone and filled from below by an upwelling of water from an underground river. 1.6 million gallons per day flows up from the earth, and then seeps out thru cracks in the cliff wall to join a nearby creek.

Dwellings built into the cliff here date to about the same time period as all of the others we’ve seen, and were abandoned around the same time as well.

The well looks beautiful, but apparently the water contains high concentrations of carbon dioxide, so there are no fish. Instead, it’s filled with single celled organisms, and some adapted shrimp-like creatures, and leeches. Millions of leeches.

The leeches lurk on the bottom of the pool, and emerge late in the day to feed on the shrimp creatures. Since the leeches have no eyes, and hunt by sensing movement, the shrimp are adapted to move as little as possible for survival. 😳

In addition to the carbon dioxide, the water contains high concentrations of arsenic. 😖 Drinking a little might be ok, but over an extended period would definitely be bad for your health.