13 April ‘07
Friday
We leave Montezuma Castle and Montezuma Well and travel west about 30 miles and come to Tuzigoot. Tuzigoot is Apache for “crooked water” and is the remnant of a Southern Sinagua village that sits high on a hill and was built about the same time as the others were. It sits about 120 feet above the Verde Valley and has a river that winds all around the fields that they cultivated. The original pueblo was 2 stories high and had 77 ground floor rooms. Unlike homes of today, most of the entrances were through the roofs. They used a ladder to get to the top of the roof and then another ladder to get down into the rooms. They always had a security person located at the top of their dwellings to watch for the “enemy”, whether it was here at Tuzigoot or either of the Montezuma locations. Somewhere in the 1700’s the Southern Sinagua Indians started to disappear. It’s not known whether they just walked away because of the decline of game, or what, but they do know that they just didn’t die there.
Then there was one more stop for the day…as we were driving to Tuzigoot, we saw this small town located high on the side of a hill. It reminded both of us of the hill towns of Italy, France or Spain. Well we just had to find the road that would take us up there. It turned out to be the town of Jerome. It initially was a mining town that got its name from the guy that owned the mine and just about everything else in the town itself. All the buildings were hanging off the side of the hill and the streets were either going up or going down, not a single flat piece of land or road available. The shops were still set up in the original buildings from the early 1900’s, with the squeaky floors, high ceilings, large storefront windows that not only looked into the store and all it’s displays, but on through to the large windows at the back that looked out over the Verde Valley below and the red rock plateaus heading toward Sedona. We ( I ) found a wonderful bakery in the basement of one of the buildings that was started by this young lady and her husband. She is the granddaughter of “Giselle” (also the name of the bakery) who developed all the recipes in France while she (Giselle) was dreaming of starting her own business in the US back in the 20’s.
Friday
We leave Montezuma Castle and Montezuma Well and travel west about 30 miles and come to Tuzigoot. Tuzigoot is Apache for “crooked water” and is the remnant of a Southern Sinagua village that sits high on a hill and was built about the same time as the others were. It sits about 120 feet above the Verde Valley and has a river that winds all around the fields that they cultivated. The original pueblo was 2 stories high and had 77 ground floor rooms. Unlike homes of today, most of the entrances were through the roofs. They used a ladder to get to the top of the roof and then another ladder to get down into the rooms. They always had a security person located at the top of their dwellings to watch for the “enemy”, whether it was here at Tuzigoot or either of the Montezuma locations. Somewhere in the 1700’s the Southern Sinagua Indians started to disappear. It’s not known whether they just walked away because of the decline of game, or what, but they do know that they just didn’t die there.
Then there was one more stop for the day…as we were driving to Tuzigoot, we saw this small town located high on the side of a hill. It reminded both of us of the hill towns of Italy, France or Spain. Well we just had to find the road that would take us up there. It turned out to be the town of Jerome. It initially was a mining town that got its name from the guy that owned the mine and just about everything else in the town itself. All the buildings were hanging off the side of the hill and the streets were either going up or going down, not a single flat piece of land or road available. The shops were still set up in the original buildings from the early 1900’s, with the squeaky floors, high ceilings, large storefront windows that not only looked into the store and all it’s displays, but on through to the large windows at the back that looked out over the Verde Valley below and the red rock plateaus heading toward Sedona. We ( I ) found a wonderful bakery in the basement of one of the buildings that was started by this young lady and her husband. She is the granddaughter of “Giselle” (also the name of the bakery) who developed all the recipes in France while she (Giselle) was dreaming of starting her own business in the US back in the 20’s.