Montezuma Castle and the Verde Valley Day Trip

Montezuma Castle National Monument, ninety minutes north of Phoenix on Interstate 17, preserves a five-story, twenty-room cliff dwelling built by the Sinagua people around 1100 CE. The structure is remarkable in its state of preservation — seventy-five feet above the ground in an alcove in a limestone cliff face, protected by the overhanging rock. The monument is one of the most significant archaeological sites in the Southwest and was one of the first preserved as a National Monument by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906. The Verde Valley in which the monument sits is an hour's worth of day-trip material beyond the monument itself. Montezuma Well, seven miles northeast, is a natural limestone sinkhole fed by a constant flow of 1.5 million gallons of water daily, used by successive Indigenous peoples for irrigation. Tuzigoot National Monument, fifteen miles west near Clarkdale, preserves a hilltop Sinagua village with 110 rooms overlooking the Verde Valley. Return to Phoenix via Highway 89A through Jerome for the full scenic route.