Finding the Worth While in the Southwest

by Charles Francis Saunders

The Grand Cañon may be visited at any season, though in winter there is often snow upon the rim and upper levels. Usually there is not enough to interfere seriously with reaching the various points of interest; and as one descends into the gorge, one soon passes out of wintry into warmer and still warmer conditions. Even in December some flowers will be blooming in the bottom of the Cañon. July and August constitute the usual summer rainy season, when frequent thunderstorms are to be expected, particularly in the afternoons. They are usually of short duration. The atmospheric effects accompanying and succeeding them are often magnificent.[82]

CHAPTER XIII
MONTEZUMA’S CASTLE AND WELL, WHICH MONTEZUMA NEVER SAW

If you happen never to have speculated in copper or archaeology and are not a Southwesterner, it is quite likely that you have not heard of the Verde Valley. It is a somewhat sinuous cleft up and down the very center of Arizona, holding in its heart the Verde River (el Rio Verde, or Green River, of the Spaniards) which has its source under the San Francisco Peaks, and after 150 miles or so through cramped cañons and sunny bottomlands of more or less fertility, joins the Salt River about 50 miles east of the latter’s junction with the Gila. On the western edge of its upper reaches are the smelter towns of Clarkdale and Jerome,[83] and the famous copper mines of the United Verde Company. Across the valley from these, to the eastward and bordering the great Mogollon Mesa that divides the basin of the Little Colorado and the Gila, is that Red Rock country referred to in a previous chapter, together with the Verde’s beautiful tributary, Oak Creek; while some 30 miles to the south there enters the Verde another stream called Beaver Creek. It is upon the latter the scene of this present chapter is laid.

OLD GOVERNOR’S PALACE, SANTA FE, N. M.

The center for three centuries of the political life of New Mexico, under the successive regimes of Spaniard, Indian, Mexican and American.

MONTEZUMA’S CASTLE

Near Camp Verde, Arizona. A beautiful specimen of prehistoric Cliff architecture, with which, however, Montezuma had nothing to do.

Today the valley of the Verde maintains but a sparse population. Here and there is a white man’s hamlet; here and there are wickiups of the now peaceable Apaches; and where, between the cliffs that wall in much of the valley, there is level land enough to make farming operations possible, there are scattering ranches strung along. Time was, however, when the valley was the home of an abounding aboriginal population. How long ago that was no one knows, further than that it was before—and probably long before—the 16th century Spaniards discovered the Upper Verde and reported silver outcroppings there. The bordering cliffs and hilltops are dotted and honeycombed with the ruins of pueblos, stone fortresses and cave dwellings to an extent that has made the region unusually attractive to the archaeologists. Two of these prehistoric remains on Beaver Creek hold especial interest also for the lay traveler. They are the so-called Casa Montezuma, or Montezuma’s Castle, and Montezuma’s Well. The former, a strikingly fine example of a cliff ruin as imposing in its way as a castle on the Rhine, has been made a National Monument and is under such protection of the United States government as goes with a printed notice tacked upon a tree nearby, for there is no resident guardian. The Well is upon a private ranch 8 miles north of the Castle. It need hardly be said that Montezuma, whose name is popularly joined to both, had nothing whatever to do with either; nor indeed had any Aztec, though people who get their ancient history from newspapers, will tell you that the ruins are of Aztec construction. Both Castle and Well are close to the Arizona State Highway, and may be reached by a 50 or 60 mile drive from Flagstaff, or half that from Jerome. Another way to reach them is from Prescott by automobile livery. Yet another is by rail from Prescott to Cherry Creek (Dewey Postoffice) on the Crown King branch of the Santa Fe, and then by auto-stage through the picturesque Cherry Creek Cañon 32 miles to Campe Verde on the Verde River. Campe Verde was formerly an army post of importance during the Apache wars, but is now peaceful enough for the most pacific, maintaining a hotel, a garage, a barber shop, an ice-cream and soda-pop saloon, a store or two, and similar amenities of 20th century living as delightful as unexpected in this out-of-the-way corner of our country.