After meandering our way through the seemingly endless desert of the Vermilion Cliffs and the Grand Staircase Escalante, we arrived at Tuzigoot National Monument. This guy is one of a few sites in/around Flagstaff, Arizona that preserves ancient indigenous structures. I loovvveee learning about everyone who originally lived in these areas. If you close your eyes while you’re there and just listen to the wind, you can totally imagine them all around you.

Tuzigoot is the home of the Sinagua people. They developed this beautiful place gradually, according to the timeline below.

It’s also believed that it was a crucial central area for everyone else who lived in the Verde Valley/Colorado Plateau, like a (big) little metropolis for passing through, trading, and having big events. Overall, this general area is believed to have been inhabited by people starting 10,000 years ago.

The Sinagua people moved on from this place in the 1300’s, probably due to something related to climate change. It was found again by settlers/archaeologists in the 1880’s, excavated in the 1930’s, then named a National Monument in 1939.

When excavating, the archaeologists found items from far away that made absolutely no sense to be there – stuff all the way from the Amazon jungle.

It’s pretty cool, you walk the sidewalk into the pueblo itself and climb a narrow stairwell to the roof where you can overlook all of the rooms and the entire area.

Tuzigoot was specifically built on a big ol’ hill that gives view of the entire valley, making it easier to defend. In some of the rooms, they’ve left some tools and grinding stones visible.

Overall, we didn’t see many other people here. We were there in the beginning of April and it was SO HOT, I can’t imagine how much worse it gets through the summer. The trail to explore the pueblo is a quick 0.3 mile walk, mostly on sidewalk. There’s absolutely no shade whatsoever.

Inside the visitor center, they have some amazing exhibits of the various tools, textiles, bones, etc they found at the site. Being inside and looking at everything was the perfect break from sweating our butts off admiring everything outside.

We didn’t spend long here – probably less than an hour – and it was so worth the detour, especially after learning more about how the people of Tuzigoot may have interacted with the people of Wupatki NM, Montezuma Castle NM, and Walnut Canyon NM, all of which we’d visited.

Thennnnn we headed to my favorite spot in Flagstaff yet: Lava River Cave.

Learn more about the human history of Tuzigoot NM via NPS:
https://www.nps.gov/tuzi/learn/historyculture/human-history.htm

Tuzigoot homepage via NPS:
https://www.nps.gov/tuzi/index.htm

More about the Sinagua people via Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinagua