Montezuma National Monument, Arizona
Montezuma Castle National Monument, located near Camp Verde, Arizona, in the Southwestern United States, features well-preserved cliff dwellings. They were built and used by the Pre-Columbian Sinagua people around 700 AD. Several Hopi clans trace their roots to immigrants from the Montezuma Castle/Beaver Creek area. Clan members periodically return to their former homes for religious ceremonies. When European Americans discovered them in the 1860s, they named them for the Aztec emperor of Mexico Montezuma II, due to mistaken beliefs that the emperor had been connected to their construction.
© Leslie J. Morris
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