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Phoenix :
Features
Asked about run-ins with Jerome’s ghosts, one bartender at the appropriately named Spirit Room tavern fetches a stack of photos from her car that chronicle—among other things—orbs, each with a back story about a phantom brush or some inexplicable racket.
With all this noise in the ether, tourism has helped charming local shops and restaurants grow, making Jerome a great place to, um, kill an afternoon.
Jerome is located 45 km southwest of Sedona, off Highway 89. Start asking locals about ghosts at either the Spirit Room (
928-634-8809; spiritroom.com) or the Jerome Historical Society (
jeromehistoricalsociety.org).
MONTEZUMA CASTLE
Perhaps the strangest thing about these cliff ruins outside Camp Verde is the oft-repeated concession that very little is known about those who lived in them.
We know that ancestral Pueblo peoples called the Sinagua (after Sierra Sin Agua, or “mountain without water” in Spanish) once flourished in the Verde Valley, seeking copper, salt, cotton, food and shelter. Given that, we also know that Montezuma is a misnomer—Mexican-American War veterans mistakenly christened the place after the Aztec king in the 1870s, and the name has stuck well beyond the site’s first legitimate excavations more than 50 years later.
Most importantly we know—with Montezuma Castle and the artifacts recovered there as evidence—that the Sinagua were ingenious engineers and, like most pre-Columbian cultures, both great foragers and stewards of the natural resources around them. What we really haven’t figured out is how to collectively harness their humble wisdom.
The impressive cliff dwellings are tucked in a deep alcove about 100 feet above the Beaver Creek floodplain (presumably to preserve it for farming). Visitors look up from here. The constructions gape out from the craggy face like jagged, leviathan teeth, concealing 19 masonry rooms on five ascending levels, wherein beams, reeds, grasses and clay were used to construct floors and ladders—enough room for as many as 50 people.
The Montezuma Castle National Monument, about 150 km up Interstate 17 from Phoenix, is open seven days a week (
2800 Montezuma Castle Rd., Camp Verde; 928-567-3322; nps.gov/moca).
ARCOSANTI
Paolo Soleri must think most of us are completely nuts. Not only has modern society failed to embrace the Italian architect’s high-concept fusion of life, work, education, culture, leisure and health into incredibly dense, sustainable communal structures (called Arcology, or ecological architecture), but even in the wake of harsh climate change, we’ve only begun to reconsider the suburban sprawl model that drove us into our collective mess.
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