Trees 04/02/20

Dead Horse Ranch State Park, Cottonwood, Arizona

The eyes of the LORD keep watch over knowledge, but He frustrates the words of the unfaithful.  ~ Proverbs 22:12

We began our day early by visiting a local laundromat.  They open at 6am, but we weren’t there quite that early, just early enough that there were only a couple of people the entire time we were there.  We wore gloves and kept our distance, then used hand sanitizer when we left.  It’s a nice little place, with paintings on all the walls.  Not quite as creative as the last place, but still very nice, and very clean.

We also made a quick stop at the grocery store, but they didn’t have about half the items on our list.  So they remain on the list in the hopes that the next time we go out, we’ll be able to find them.

Back home, laundry put away, lunch over; we went for a walk at two different places within our Park.  One was actually a short trail around a pond!  We haven’t seen landscape like that for quite a while!  It was a nice change! 

Then, in a different section of the Park, we tackled a short trail that went along the river.  Another change of pace.

We saw trees today!  Big, lovely trees!  Not the scrub ones we’ve been around for such a long time.  Actual real, tall, leafing trees!  And some beautiful purple wildflowers!  What a blessing!

Back at home, Blaine was able to secure us a pass for one of Sedona’s premier Jeep trails – ‘Soldier’s Pass’.  That’s really exciting!  Especially since they only allow 12 per day.  And even more exciting?  It cost us a whole six bucks!

And that’s it for today.  I think we’ve had enough drama the past few days to warrant a rather dull, uneventful one, don’t you?  😊

TUZIGOOT NATIONAL MONUMENT

From 1100 to about 1425 AD, the Verde Valley was occupied by a people called the Southern Sinagua–a name that means “Without Water” in Spanish. The Sinagua constructed a string of pueblos up and down the Verde River, forming a loosely knit polity called the Verde Confederacy (see below) that engaged in mutual trade and unified defense for over 300 years. The northern end of this chain of ancient pueblos is marked by three major sites, all located within a few miles of each other: Tuzigoot (90 to 100 rooms), Hatalacva (60 rooms), and the once-mighty Bridgeport (237 rooms). Bridgeport and Hatalacva now lie in ruins; but Tuzigoot was excavated in the thirties and subsequently reconstructed. It is now a National Monument, open to the public.

Tuzigoot is located atop a small hill in an oxbow of the Verde River, outside the old mining town of Clarksdale, Arizona. With an estimated 90 to 100 rooms, it is one of three major pueblos near the north end of the Verde River Valley.

Construction at Tuzigoot spanned over 300 years, from about 1100 to 1400 AD. The earliest construction consisted of a small number of rooms near the top of the hill, with new rooms added in an ad-hoc fashion as the population increased. At its peak in the late 1300s, the pueblo was 500 feet long, 100 feet wide, contained 86 ground floor rooms and 15 second story rooms, and probably housed as many as 230 people.

The name Tuzigoot is Apache for “Crooked Water”. At one time the river flowed in a loop around the west side of Tuzigoot; but long before the arrival of man it changed its course, and now runs along the east side. The original riverbed to the west became a large, flat marsh (Tavasci Marsh), and was used by the Pueblo’s inhabitants to grow crops of squash, corn and beans.

Tuzigoot was excavated in 1933-1934 by archaeologists Louis R. Caywood and Edward H. Spicer, aided in part by labor provided by the Federal Emergency Relief Agency’s Civil Works Administration (CWA), an organization created during the Great Depression to provide employment for out-of-work Americans. Caywood and Spicer’s report to the U.S. Department of the Interior, titled “Tuzigoot; The Excavation and Repair of a Ruin on the Verde River near Clarkdale, Arizona” (July, 1935), contains some fascinating details:

• During excavation, 429 sets of human remains were discovered. In most cases, these were found buried in the hillside with a few personal possessions, their heads covered with rush matting, and their bodies wrapped in cotton cloth. Many of these remains were reburied at the site after excavation was completed.
• Dedrochronolgy–the technique of tree ring dating–had just been developed by A. E. Douglass of the University of Arizona, and Caywood and Spicer attempted to apply this new method to date Tuzigoot’s roof timbers. Unfortunately, they met with limited success. Much of the site had been burned near the time of abandonment, destroying many of its wooden roof beams. Also, most of the wood used in construction was sycamore and juniper, neither of which lend themselves to tree ring dating. In the end, only two dates were obtained, both from pinion logs from the same roof, which dated construction of that particular section to about 1200 AD. But as the authors lamented: “The two rooms which this single roof covered are obviously neither the earliest nor the latest constructed rooms in the pueblo. They were built at some intermediate period in the history of the village.”
• Entrances to rooms were almost exclusively by means of hatchways through the roofs. Only five side entrances were found, and two of these had been completely sealed up sometime during the period of occupation of the pueblo.
• The interior walls were all covered by a red-colored mud plaster an inch or more in thickness. However: “As a rule the plaster coats were blackened with smoke, so that the interiors of rooms must have presented a very dark aspect indeed.”
• During the excavation of Tuzigoot, Caywood and Spicer also partially excavated the nearby Hatalacva Pueblo. But no field notes or reports are known to exist.

According to a 1933 agreement between the United Verde Copper Company and the Yavapai County Chamber of Commerce, all artifacts recovered during Caywood and Spicer’s excavation at Tuzigoot Pueblo were to be divided between the United Verde Copper Company, the Smoki Museum in Prescott, and the Arizona State Museum in Tucson, with first choice going to the United Verde Copper Company (which owned the land). Much of this has since been accounted for, and many of the artifacts that originally went to the United Verde Copper Company are now on display in the museum at the site.

Tuzigoot National Monument was established by Presidential Proclamation on July 25, 1939. ~ arizonaruins.com

FYI – 1939?  That would be FDR.