Tonto National Monument

WHAT a great day I was having.  Starting out in Payson, I'd ridden the Mogollon Rim country, from high pine forest to the Salt river valley and Roosevelt Lake.  It may not have been the most difficult or exciting route I'd ever traveled but it sure was a pretty ride.



Coming around tight turns high up in the mountains, switching back the hundreds of curves, along rock faces, chasing the sun westward, XT and I were in our realm.

 




Sometime riding a dual purpose bike in a place just like this, is about as close to the "perfect ride" as you can get.



Much as I love exploring Crown King or Sierra Giganta, you can't always judge a ride by how tough it was.  In fact the two aren't even the same thing.


 

My burger washed down by a cold Pepsi, I mounted up and headed up the road.  Next stop, Tonto National Monument AZ.

As you ride the access road up into the National Park, you get a good look at the desert mountains looming large across the horizon.





I paid my three dollar entrance fee, exchanged my Icons for runners, stowed my gear and camera's in one hand, water bottle in the other, began the long walk to the Cliff dwellings.  It was plenty hot out and the walk is steadily uphill.  The views were, well stunning.  What can I say.



  

About 800 years ago the peaceful native tribe known as the Tonto Basin people began transforming the cliffs into habitat suitable for large family groups.  Below this particular site, even today a desert spring flows in the valley below. 

Each day, water would have to be carried a thousand feet up the steep valley.  The east facing cliffs would have provided shelter from desert heat, the valley of the Salt river would have proven to be suitable for simple agriculture and the heights would have provided some security.


 



Sometime around 1450, well before Columbus sailed west, the Tonto Basin peoples abandoned the site as many cliff dwellers did throughout the SW United States.


No one is certain it seems, why...

these various tribes disappeared into the history books.

Even hundreds of years later, it's still a mystery.

Eighty eight, took me back into Phoenix and the freeways, eventually home.

A hundred years later, a new tribe began moving into the valleys and surrounding mountains.






These newcomers, known as the Apache people, were not as peaceful as those gone before...