The notch which was the original entry.
Salado children who scrambled in and out of this entryway knew the dangers of these loose rocky slopes, but our children are much less aware of the slope’s hazards. For your children’s safety, please keep them with you. Leaving the trail or running on it invites injury.
As you go up the modern stairs, note the retaining wall; it is probably closely similar to the original wall. The village once extended out as far as the retaining wall, rooms dividing what is now open space at the front of the cave, but the original rooms and wall have eroded away.
20 THE ANCIENT SCENE. Think back 700 years and imagine this view then; no power lines, no roads, no lake, no smog. This spectacular view of the Salt River Valley provided a fine defensive outlook. We do not know who—or what—drove the Salado to the high places, but this village and others like it seem to have been built for defense. Little evidence of warfare has been found.
Once four or five rooms were here in the front of the cave; erosion has destroyed all but the wall stubs you see on the right.
Because the ruin is easily visible from the valley it was quickly discovered, probably by ranchers in the 1870s. The first written record of the Tonto ruins appeared in 1883, by which time they were well known.
The cliff dwelling overlooks the valley where Salado farms were tilled—1,000 feet below the village here, and 2 to 5 miles away. Ancient irrigation canals which watered Salado corn could still be seen until Roosevelt Lake flooded the valley after 1911. To walk 5 miles or more to tend a crop was not unusual for a Pueblo farmer. Well into this century Hopi Indians, distant modern relatives of the ancient Salado, ran as far as 20 miles to their cornfields.
21 TWO-STORY ROOM. The west wall of this two-story room is one of the few that reached to the cave ceiling. The 3 beams mark the ceiling of the room’s first floor, and 2 beam sockets higher up indicate the second floor ceiling. Most rooms had a 3-foot-high parapet wall around the roof, providing a safe place in the open air for work or play.
The small hole in the second floor wall overlooks the original entryway, reminding us that this was probably a fortified village built during troubled times.