It's About the (RV) Journey....: Tuzigoot...........

Cottonwood and Clarksdale are the towns right next to Jerome, well, down the mountain from it anyway. So, we made a little stop at Tuzigoot National Monument in Cottonwood (or Clarksdale?), since we were so close to it. Tuzigoot is the ruins of an ancient Sinagua pueblo. For more information, click here.

the ruins on the hill

close up

from the museum...an artist's rendition of the living quarters

does that say "take pictures"???

hey now

This pueblo was two to three stories high, and had about 87 rooms. At one time, 250 people lived here. The Sinagua were farmers and artists and did a lot of trading. There is a Visitor Center containing many artifacts from the ancient pueblo. The most fascinating thing that we learned though was that this pueblo ruin was excavated from the mountaintop. A picture in the Visitor Center shows what the area looked like before the archaeological dig. It just looked like a pile of rubble. Its amazing what can be found out here in the desert. Can you imagine?

one of the rooms

another "room"...note this one seems to have a door

a lot of people lived here at one time-about 250

the rooms were accessed via ladders

heading up

this room was nice and cool!

the roof was made of logs and grass

check out the view

yeah....this would be my favorite place...it was nice and cool

at the top of the ruins

you can see the "rooms" from here

they didn't have doors

another view looking down from the top-very interesting dwelling!

it was fort-like....being perched on the hill like that

the area around was verdant too....looks like a good place to live

as we walked down checking out the rooms, we weren't paying much attention to anything else until we came to this sign

ugh...we had to walk back up....hahahah!

we were so absorbed looking at the ruins that we weren't paying attention to the trail

was a bit steep....but short....hahah! (don't know why I'm complaining...it wasn't that bad at all!)

very cool

This was a very quick stop...only requiring about a half hour to explore the ruins...and it was just minutes from Jerome. We drove through Old Town Cottonwood on our way back, but didn't stop anywhere so I can't comment further. We had a lovely day doing what we did....Jerome and Tuzigoot.