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Verde Valley The great basin of the Verde River was cherished by its inhabitants long before white people arrived.
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| Montezuma's Castle | Sycamore Valley | Montezuma's Well | |
| Beaver Creek | |||
| The Verde River is one of Arizona's last free-flowing river systems. Lying outside the Sonoran Desert, its altitude is higher. It is a precious Arizona known to those who do their homework. | |||
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One can no longer approach because the cliff has become unstable.
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The walk from visitor's center to "Monteczuma's Castle" passes through "Sycamore Valley," named for the splendid sycamores which abide.
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A a natural limestone sinkhole through which some 1,500,000 US gallons of water emerge each day from an underground spring. The Well measures 386 feet in diameter from rim to rim and contains a near-constant volume of spring water even in times of severe drought. The water is highly carbonated and contains high levels of arseonic. At least five endemic species (the most endemic of any spring in the southwestern United States) are found exclusively in Montezuma Well. The ruins of several prehistoric dwellings are scattered in and around the rim of the Well. Their erstwhile inhabitants belonged to several indigeneous American cultures that are believed to have occupied the Verde Valley between 700 and 1425 CE, the foremost of which being a cultural group archaeologists have termed the Southern Sinaqua. The Sinagua people, and possibly earlier cultures, intensively farmed the land surrounding the Well using its constant outflow as a reliable source of irrigation. Beginning about 700 CE, the Well's natural drainage into the immediately adjacent Wet Beaver Creek was diverted into a man-made canal running parallel to the creek, segments of which still conduct the outflow today. The prehistoric canal, estimated at nearly seven miles in length, likely drained into a network of smaller lateral canals downstream, supplying perhaps as much as 60 acres of farmland with water.
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_21may06-b_1553.jpg Cliff dwellings are visible.  |
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This community located on the Beaver Creek is the location of our motel from which we explored this region. No cafe or restaurant was open on account of COVID. There is no village center or post office. A quiet and down-scale place location, it was an abject contrast to the frenzied real estate of Sedona.
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