 From Phoenix, take Interstate 17 to exit 289, and follow the signs for two miles of easy driving through the Verde Valley to the ancient home of some of Arizona's Sinagua Indians. In the twelfth century, the cliff-dwelling tribe built an elaborate "castle," so majestic that many mistook it as Aztecan, and thought it was made by Montezuma himself. A sloping, stone-walled asphalt parking lot gives way to tree-sheltered National Park Service buildings which house well-maintained restrooms and offer fountain-fresh drinking water. A nominal fee takes you into the Visitor Center -- little more than an elaborate information booth and gift/book store, surrounded by surprisingly interesting exhibits. Among the displays of preserved pottery, baskets and tools of the prehistoric people, are fossil imprints and dried specimens of insect species that have survived to modern times--even though the Sinagua didn't.
 Exit the must-see Visitor Center museum, to walk shady, wheelchair accessible cement paths for a view of Montezuma's Castle. The magnificent dwelling seems to defy gravity from its 100-foot high roost in a recessed area beneath the cliff's overhang. Some speculate the high dwelling, accessible only by ladders and ropes, provided protection from the sweltering desert heat, and wild animals. This view from afar does little to spark the imagination, but on the way out, a glassed-in model of the castle, complete with Indian figurines and continuous replay tape, pulls you in to their everyday life. Peering in at the realistic loin-clothed figures--a young mother chasing a toddler who has dashed toward the edge--you'll find that despite their mystical, unexplained disappearance, the ancient Sinagua Indians were merely people, with social structures and communities modern to their time, and not so distant from our own.
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