The park's Geologic Resources Inventory report. Image from the National Park Service's page
Montezuma Castle National Monument lies about 30 km (19 miles) south of Sedona, in Yavapai County, Arizona. Proclaimed on December 8, 1906, it covers about 411 hectares (1,016 acres) and protects prehistoric and historic sites, famous cliff dwellings, an artesian-fed sinkhole and desert riparian habitat, in two separate units:
| Unit | Highlight |
|---|---|
| Castle Unit (south, larger) | Montezuma Castle — a well-preserved Sinagua cliff dwelling built in the 12th and 13th centuries, five stories tall with 20 rooms, the most visible feature of a varied landscape in the Verde Valley |
| Well Unit (north) | Montezuma Well — a spring-fed limestone sinkhole home to invertebrates found nowhere else on Earth |
Between two provinces
The monument sits in a transition zone between the Basin and Range and the Colorado Plateau, with features of both: the horst-and-graben topography of the Basin and Range and the colorful, flat-lying sedimentary layers of the Plateau.
The rocks
Most of the bedrock is the Verde Formation, of Miocene–Pliocene age, made of lake deposits, travertine (limestone that forms around mineral springs) and limestone:
- Montezuma Castle is built into the formation's limestone.
- Montezuma Well formed in its travertine, where an underground cavern collapsed, leaving a huge limestone sink with a natural flowing spring.
About 5.7 million liters (1.5 million gallons) of water pass through the well every day, draining through a 91-meter (300-foot) cave and emerging into the remains of pre-contact irrigation canals and ditches, now thickly coated with travertine.
Younger surface deposits include Pleistocene–Holocene terrace gravels and Holocene alluvium.
From the Geologic Resources Inventory image gallery. Image from the National Park Service's page
Maps and reports
Part of the park's geologic map. Image from the National Park Service's page
The NPS Geologic Resources Inventory makes geologic maps, reports, posters and scoping summaries for more than 270 natural resource parks. Montezuma Castle's are in the NPS DataStore, along with a completed Soil Resources Inventory. The region's broader story is in the NPS guide to the Basin and Range.
Sources
Based on "NPS Geodiversity Atlas—Montezuma Castle National Monument, Arizona," National Park Service, citing KellerLynn (2019) and NPS (2016); a work of the United States government in the public domain.
In these publicationsMontezuma Castle National Monument
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.nps.gov
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