Hike down into Walnut Canyon and walk in the footsteps of the people that lived here over 900 years ago. Under limestone overhangs, the Sinagua built their homes. These single story structures, cliff dwellings, were occupied from about 1100 to 1250. Look down into the canyon and imagine the creek running through. Visualize a woman hiking up from the bottom with a pot of water on her back. Imagine the men on the rim farming corn or hunting deer. Think of a cold winter night with your family huddled around the fire... Come out and see millions of years of history unraveled in the geology of the rocks. Listen to the canyon wren and enjoy the turkey vultures soaring above. And if you look closely, you may even see an elk or a javelina. Different lifezones overlap here, mixing species that usually live far apart. In this canyon, desert cacti grow alongside mountain firs. A truly beautiful place to see! And it is a sacred place. The people that lived here moved on to become the modern pueblo people of today. Walnut Canyon is one of their ancestral homes. Travel through quietly and carefully. And please, leave no trace.

Address:
Flagstaff Area National Monuments - WACA
Flagstaff, AZ 86004

Phone: Visitor Information (928)5263367 Visitor Information, HQ (928)5261157

Yuma Territorial Prison State Historic Park

Address
1 Prison Hill Road
Yuma, Arizona 85364
(928) 783-4771

Directions
Take I-8 to Yuma, take Exit 1 to Giss Parkway, turn at Prison Hill Road.

Park Hours
Open daily 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Closed at 2:00 p.m. Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Eve. Closed on Christmas Day

Yuma Crossing State Historic Park

Address
201 N. 4th Avenue
Yuma, Arizona 85364
(928) 329-0471

Directions
Take I-8 to Yuma / Winterhaven 4th Avenue exit. Go south on 4th Avenue 1/2 mile. Park is located on the east side of 4th Avenue.

Lake Havasu State Park

Address
699 London Bridge Road
Lake Havasu, Arizona 86403
(928) 855-2784 phone
(928) 453-9358 fax Boating Safety Classes in Parker and Lake Havasu.
Download Schedule.pdf here

Directions
The park is located at 699 London Bridge Road off Highway 95 & Industrial Boulevard.

Park Hours
Open 365 per year. Day use hours are from Sunrise to 10:00 p.m. Checkout time for campers is 2:00 p.m.

Cattail Cove State Park

Address
P.O. Box 1990
Lake Havasu City,
Arizona 86405
(928) 855-1223 phone
(928) 855-1730 fax

Directions
The park is located on State Route 95, 15 miles south of Lake Havasu, Arizona.

Park Hours
The park is open 365 per year. Day-use hours are Sunrise to 10:00 p.m. Checkout time for campers is 2:00 p.m.

Buckskin Mountain State Park

Address
Buckskin Mountain:
5476 Highway 95
Parker, Arizona 85344
(928) 667-3231

Directions

Buckskin Mountain State Park is located on Arizona Highway 95,
about 12 miles north of Parker. The River Island unit is one mile north
of Buckskin Mountain State Park

Alamo Lake State Park

Address
P.O. Box 38
Wenden, Arizona 85357
(928) 669-2088
phone and fax

Directions
The park is located 38 miles north of Wenden and US 60

Park Hours
Open 365 per year.

Crowning a desert hilltop is an ancient pueblo. From a roof top a child scans the desert landscape for the arrival of traders, who are due any day now. What riches will they bring? What stories will they tell? Will all of them return? From the top of the Tuzigoot Pueblo it is easy to imagine such an important moment. Tuzigoot is an ancient village or pueblo built by a culture known as the Sinagua. The pueblo consisted of 110 rooms including second and third story structures. The first buildings were built around A.D. 1000. The Sinagua were agriculturalists with trade connections that spanned hundreds of miles. The people left the area around 1400. The site is currently comprised of 42 acres.

Address:
Tuzigoot National Monument
Clarkdale, AZ 86324

Phone: Visitor Information 9286345564 Headquarters 9285675276

Wellpreserved cliff dwellings were occupied by the Salado culture during the 13th, 14th, and early 15th centuries. The people farmed in the Salt River Valley and supplemented their diet by hunting and gathering native wildlife and plants. The Salado were fine craftsmen, producing some of the most exquisite polychrome pottery and intricately woven textiles to be found in the Southwest. Many of these objects are on display in the Visitor Center museum. The monument is located in the Upper Sonoran ecosystem, known primarily for its characteristic saguaro cactus. Other common plants include: cholla, prickly pear, hedgehog, and barrel cactus (blooming April through June); yucca, sotol, and agave; creosote bush and ocotillo; palo verde and mesquite trees; an amazing variety of colorful wild flowers (February through March); and a lush riparian area which supports large Arizona black walnut, sycamore, and hackberry trees.

Address:
HC02 Box 4602
Roosevelt, AZ 85545

Phone: Visitor Information (928) 4672241

MAP

http://www.nps.gov/carto/PDF/TONTmap1.pdf

People must have been warned by tremors and earthquakes before redhot rocks exploded from the ground and rained down on their pit houses and farmland. Perhaps some stayed to watch as their homes and farmland were buried under slowmoving lava flows. Most fled, taking their possessions with them. Billowing ash, falling cinders, and forest fires blackened the land and the daytime sky. At night, the horizon glowed fiery red. A large fire fountain, accompanied by lightning and a tremendous roar, could be seen and heard for hundreds of miles. It must have been the loudest noise these people had ever experienced. When their world again grew quiet, people faced a dramatically altered land. New mountains, including the 1,000foothigh cinder cone now known as Sunset Crater, stood where open meadows and forests had been. Black cinders blanketed the region. Life in the shadow of the volcano was changed profoundly and forever. Some people relocated nearby at Walnut Canyon or Wupatki. (Click on ?Flagstaff Area National Monuments?) 900 years later, Sunset Crater is still the youngest volcano on the Colorado Plateau. The volcanos red rim and the dark lava flows seem to have cooled and hardened to a jagged surface only yesterday. As plants return, so do the animals that use them for food and shelter. And so do human visitors, intrigued by this opportunity to see nature?s response to a volcanic eruption.

Address:
Flagstaff Area National Monuments - SUCR
Flagstaff, AZ 86004

Phone: Visitor Information 9285260502 Visitor Information, HQ 9285261157

For its time and place, there was no other pueblo like Wupatki. Less than 800 years ago, it was the tallest, largest, and perhaps the richest and most influential pueblo around. It was home to 85100 people, and several thousand more lived within a day?s walk. And it was built in one of the lowest, warmest, and driest places on the Colorado Plateau. What compelled people to build here? Human history here spans at least 10,000 years. But only for a time, in the 1100s, was the landscape this densely populated. The eruption of nearby Sunset Crater Volcano a century earlier probably played a part. Families that lost their homes to ash and lava had to move. They discovered that the cinders blanketing lands to the north could hold moisture needed for crops. As the new agricultural community spread, small scattered homes were replaced by a few large pueblos, each surrounded by many smaller pueblos and pithouses. Wupatki, Wukoki, Lomaki, and other masonry pueblos emerged from bedrock. Trade networks expanded, bringing exotic items like turquoise, shell jewelry, copper bells, and parrots. Wupatki flourished as a meeting place of different cultures. Then, by about 1250, the people moved on. The people of Wupatki came here from another place. From Wupatki, they sought out another home. Though no longer occupied, Wupatki is remembered and cared for, not abandoned.

Address:
Flagstaff Area National Monuments - WUPA
Flagstaff, AZ 86004

Phone: Visitor Information (928) 6792365 Visitor Information, HQ 9285261157

Its not a castle and Montezuma was never here. Nestled into a limestone recess high above the flood plain of Beaver Creek in the Verde Valley stands one of the best preserved cliff dwellings in North America. The fivestory, 20room cliff dwelling served as a "highrise apartment building" for prehistoric Sinagua Indians over 600 years ago. Early settlers to the area assumed that the imposing structure was associated with the Aztec emperor Montezuma, but the castle was abandoned almost a century before Montezuma was born. With heightened concern over vandalism of fragile southwestern prehistoric sites, Montezuma Castle became a major factor in the nations historic preservation movement with its proclamation as a national monument. The Castle was described in the December 1906 establishment proclamation as "of the greatest ethnological and scientific interest." Acreage: 840.86, federal: 16.83, nonfederal.

Address:
2800 Montezuma Castle Road
Camp Verde, AZ 86322

Phone: Visitor Information 9285673322 Headquarters 9285675276