Ancient ruins and aged highways

Click on the photo for a tour of Walnut Canyon National Monument...

The weather has changed. We arose to mostly sunny skies, but at the morning wore on, the clouds began to thicken. We decided today we would explore the Walnut Canyon National Monument cliff dwellings. The park is just a few miles east of Flagstaff, AZ, an easy drive.

The tour is a bit strenuous. There are 247 steps to descend and ascend again on the tour of the cliff dwellings. Descending was pretty easy, but at 7,000 feet altitude the ascent was a bit of a challenge! We made it, and we were glad we had made the effort.

This canyon is 400 feet deep, carved by Walnut Creek eroding the limestone and sandstone. The result, as you can see in the pictures is a stratification of the walls, which produced a series of rock ledges, one overhanging the next. When a local volcano erupted in about 1070 AD, the local Indian populations were scattered from the surrounding land.

Some of them moved into Walnut Canyon, so named for the black walnut trees that grow in parts of the canyon. They found the niches between the rock layers easy to enclose by building front walls of local rocks and mud for mortar. There was once a thriving community of about 300 cliffside homes in this canyon.

As you can see from the slide show, there is a variety of plant life here, and in fact, there are different ecosystems within the canyon itself. On the sunny, south-facing walls, yucca, prickly pear and other plants native to dry climates thrive. On the shady north-facing walls, Douglas fir and other species native to cooler, wetter climates abound. So, the residents of the canyon could change their climate, just by choosing a different rock niche a few dozen yards from their current home to build a new domicile.

On the plateau above the canyon, the residents pursued agriculture, including the cultivation of corn and various kinds of beans. They also hunted the native animals: deer, sheep, rabbits, and so on. The last two photos in the slide show are of reconstructions of buildings on the plateau. One was partially underground, the other was a two room pueblo built on the surface. Both were likely used as dwellings, but at different times in history.

Following our visit to the cliff dwellings, we drove into downtown Flagstaff to look around and shop for a few necessary items. It is an attractive town of about 58,000 population. We drove into town on the fabled US Route 66. The locals get a lot of mileage out of the historic significance of this old highway, once the main road from Chicago to Los Angeles. It has now been replaced by Interstate Route 40 for practical purposes, but Route 66 lives on in the hearts of the people who remember its heyday.

We returned to the J&H RV Park just as a thunder shower was beginning. So, we are enjoying the afternoon relaxing with Sadie, and nursing Pogo through her fear of the thunder.