good-times-rollin: pueblo ruins

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Tuzigoot National Monument

Distant Drums RV Resort
Camp Verde, AZ
April 28, 2015

Tuesday, Joe and I put on out tourist hats and did some sightseeing. First stop of the day was Tuzigoot National Monument located on Historic Scenic 89A between Cottonwood and Clarkdale.

The site is an lengthy complex of masonry rooms. The first rooms were built between 1000 and 1400. The original pueblo was two stories high in places with 87 ground floor rooms.

There were very few doors. Instead, trapdoor openings in the roofs and ladders were used to enter each room.

Looking down on the museum

Tuzigoot was excavated from 1933 to 1935. In 1935-36, the ruins were prepared for public display and a pueblo style museum and visitor center was constructed.

FDR designated Tuzigoot ruins as a National Monument in 1939.

The museum had a very nice display of pottery, tools, grinding stones, bone awls and needles, baskets, and ornaments of shell, turquoise and a local red stone (argillite). All were found on site.

The Tuzigoot potters did not decorate their wares.

Our next stop was Jerome...the small hillside "mining" town under the big white J.

Photo of Jerome taken from Tuzigoot...

The entire town of Jerome is designated a historic landmark. Copper was discovered there in the 1880s and during the 70 years they were in business, two copper mines made hundreds of millions of dollars for its investors.

In fact, the town is named after one of those investors...Eugene Jerome, a New York Lawyer who never set foot in his namesake.

Today, Jerome is a year-round artist colony with a population around 500.

Lunch was Mexican at a quirky place called Vaqueros. It has new owners ( for about 3 months) and Joe and I were quite pleased with the service and yummy food.