The Sierra Ancha Cliff Dwellings are a series of Pre-Columbian native American cliff-dwellings located in the Sierra Ancha Wilderness. They were built between 1280 and 1350, likely by the Salado people. The Sierra Ancha is home to several prominent ruin sites known as the Devil's Chasm Fortress, the Canyon Creek Ruins, the Pueblo Canyon Ruins, the Cold Springs Canyon Ruins, and the Cooper Forks Canyon Ruins. Collectively they have been called the Cherry Creek Ruins. [1]
Montezuma Castle National Monument protects a set of well-preserved dwellings located in Camp Verde, Arizona, which were built and used by the Sinagua people, a pre-Columbian culture closely related to the Hohokam and other indigenous peoples of the southwestern United States, between approximately AD 1100 and 1425. The main structure comprises five stories and about 20 rooms and was built over the course of three centuries.
The Salt River is a river in Gila and Maricopa counties in Arizona, United States, that is the largest tributary of the Gila River. The river is about 200 miles (320 km) long. Its drainage basin is about 13,700 square miles (35,000 km2) large. The longest of the Salt River's many tributaries is the 195-mile (314 km) Verde River. The Salt's headwaters tributaries, the Black River and East Fork, increase the river's total length to about 300 miles (480 km). The name Salt River comes from the fact that the river flows over large salt deposits shortly after the merging of the White and Black Rivers.
Cherry Creek may refer to:
Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument is a U.S. National Monument created to protect Mogollon cliff dwellings in the Gila Wilderness on the headwaters of the Gila River in southwest New Mexico. The 533-acre (2.16 km2) national monument was established by President Theodore Roosevelt through executive proclamation on November 16, 1907. It is located in the extreme southern portion of Catron County. Visitors can access the monument by traveling northbound from Silver City, New Mexico, 45 miles (72 km) on NM 15.
Northern Arizona is an unofficial, colloquially-defined region of the U.S. state of Arizona. Generally consisting of Apache, Coconino, Mohave, Navajo, and Gila counties, the region is geographically dominated by the Colorado Plateau, the southern border of which in Arizona is called the Mogollon Rim.
Walnut Canyon National Monument is a United States National Monument located about 10 mi (16 km) southeast of downtown Flagstaff, Arizona, near Interstate 40. The canyon rim elevation is 6,690 ft (2,040 m); the canyon's floor is 350 ft lower. A 0.9 mi (1.4 km) long loop trail descends 185 ft (56 m) into the canyon passing 25 cliff dwelling rooms constructed by the Sinagua, a pre-Columbian cultural group that lived in Walnut Canyon from about 1100 to 1250 AD. Other contemporary habitations of the Sinagua people are preserved in the nearby Tuzigoot and Montezuma Castle national monuments.
The Tonto Apache is one of the groups of Western Apache people. The term is also used for their dialect, one of the three dialects of the Western Apache language. The Chiricahua living to the south called them Ben-et-dine or binii?e'dine'. The neighboring Western Apache ethnonym for them was Koun'nde, from which the Spanish derived their use of Tonto for the group. The kindred but enemy Navajo to the north called both the Tonto Apache and their allies, the Yavapai, Dilzhʼíʼ dinéʼiʼ – “People with high-pitched voices”).
Navajo National Monument is a National Monument located within the northwest portion of the Navajo Nation territory in northern Arizona, which was established to preserve three well-preserved cliff dwellings of the Ancestral Puebloan people: Keet Seel, Betatakin, and Inscription House. The monument is high on the Shonto plateau, overlooking the Tsegi Canyon system, west of Kayenta, Arizona. It features a visitor center with a museum, three short self-guided trails, two small campgrounds, and a picnic area.
In archaeology, cliff dwellings are dwellings formed by using niches or caves in high cliffs, and sometimes with excavation or additions in the way of masonry.
The Sinagua were a pre-Columbian culture that occupied a large area in central Arizona from the Little Colorado River, near Flagstaff, to the Verde River, near Sedona, including the Verde Valley, area around San Francisco Mountain, and significant portions of the Mogollon Rim country, between approximately 500 and 1425 CE.
The Sierra Ancha is a mountain range in Gila County, in central Arizona. It lies between Roosevelt Lake to the south, the Tonto Basin to the west, Cherry Creek to the east, and Pleasant Valley to the north. The range is one of several, including the Bradshaw Mountains, Mingus Mountain of the Black Hills, and the Mazatzal Mountains, which form a transitional zone between the lowland deserts of southern Arizona and the Colorado Plateau of northeastern Arizona. The highest point in the range is Aztec Peak, at an elevation of 2345 m (7694 ft).
The Mazatzal Mountains are a mountain range in south central Arizona, about 30–45 miles northeast of the Phoenix metropolitan area. The origin of the name remains obscure but one possibility is that it is from the Nahuatl language meaning "place of the deer". The crest of the Mazatzals forms the county line between Maricopa County and Gila County. SR 87, the Beeline Highway, traverses the Mazatzals on its way to Payson. The highest peak is Mazatzal Peak at 7,903 feet (2,409 m). They also include the Four Peaks, with elevation 7,659 ft, 2,334 m; a prominent mountain and landmark of the eastern Phoenix area.
The Sierra Ancha Wilderness The Sierra Ancha Wilderness is located about 100 miles east of Phoenix, between Globe and Young. Though fairly small at 32 square miles, it contains some of the most rugged and inaccessible terrain in Arizona. Most of the Sierra Ancha Wilderness lies at an elevation of about 7000 feet. But along the eastern border, is a 20,850 acres (8,440 ha) U.S. wilderness area on the Tonto National Forest in the state of Arizona. The terrain varies from box canyons to high cliffs and pine-covered mountains. Elevations range from lows of about 4,000 feet (1,200 m) to a high of 7,733 feet (2,357 m) at Aztec Peak. It is one of two wilderness areas within the Sierra Ancha mountain range.
The Tonto Basin, also known as Pleasant Valley, covers the main drainage basin of Tonto Creek and its tributaries in central Arizona, at the southwest of the Mogollon Rim, the higher elevation transition zone across central and eastern Arizona. Although the word tonto means silly or foolish in Spanish, this place name is derived from the Apache word, Koun’nde, which means wild, rough people and refers to the indigenous Dilzhe’e Tonto Apache.
Hundreds of Ancestral Puebloan dwellings are found across the American Southwest. With almost all constructed well before 1492 CE, these Puebloan towns and villages are located throughout the geography of the Southwest.
The Bass Formation, also known as the Bass Limestone, is a Mesoproterozoic rock formation that outcrops in the eastern Grand Canyon, Coconino County, Arizona. The Bass Formation erodes as either cliffs or stair-stepped cliffs. In the case of the stair-stepped topography, resistant dolomite layers form risers and argillite layers form steep treads. In general, the Bass Formation in the Grand Canyon region and associated strata of the Unkar Group-rocks dip northeast (10°–30°) toward normal faults that dip 60+° toward the southwest. This can be seen at the Palisades fault in the eastern part of the main Unkar Group outcrop area. In addition, thick, prominent, and dark-colored basaltic sills intrude across the Bass Formation.
The Mesoproterozoic Dripping Spring Quartzite is a resistant, purple quartzite formation found in central and southeast Arizona, USA. It is a cliff-forming purplish unit found in the lower sections of the Apache Group, units of originally sedimentary layers, but later metamorphosed. The Apache Group is coeval with a similar aged Proterozoic sequence of eight geologic units found in the lowest geologic sequences of the Grand Canyon, the Grand Canyon Supergroup.
Cosmos Mindeleff (1863–1938) started his career as assistant to his brother Victor Mindeleff, who was employed by the Bureau of American Ethnology to conduct studies of Pueblo architecture in the 1880s. In 1882, James Stevenson and the Mindeleffs visited Canyon de Chelly and Canyon del Muerto. In later years, Victor and Cosmos Mindeleff continued their research in Canyon de Chelly and Cosmos published the first authoritative archeological map of White House Ruins in 1893.