Montezuma Castle National Monument
PO Box 219
Camp Verde, AZ 86322
Phone: 928-567-3322

Montezuma Castle is located 3 miles off Interstate 17. You want to use Exit 289, 1/2 mile past the Cliff Castle Casino at the traffic light is the access road.

This five-story, 20 room cliff dwelling nestled into a limestone recess high above Beaver Creek served as a “high-rise apartment building” for prehistoric Sinagua Indians over 600 years ago. It is one of the best preserved cliff dwellings in North America.

With heightened concern over vandalism of fragile southwestern prehistoric sites, Montezuma Castle became a major factor in the nation's historic preservation movement with its proclamation as a national monument. The Castle was described in the December 1906 establishment proclamation as “of the greatest ethnological and scientific interest.”

Montezuma Castle National Monument encompasses 826 acres and lies in the Verde Valley of Central Arizona at the junction of the Colorado Plateau and Basin and Range physiographic provinces. Although the climate is arid with less than 12 inches of rainfall annually, several perennial streams thread their way from upland headwaters to the Verde Valley below, creating lush riparian ribbons of green against an otherwise parched landscape of rolling, juniper-dotted hills.

From the mineral-rich Black Hills to the south, to the red and white sandstone country of Sedona and the basalt-capped palisades of the Mogollon Rim to the north, to the limestone hills of the Verde Valley, the dynamic nature of the Earth's geologic processes is evident in the landforms surrounding the monument.

The monument contains numerous species of plants such as mesquite, catclaw, and saltbush, which have adapted to life in an arid environment, but, due to the micro-habitats provided by the riparian corridors, also hosts populations of moisture-loving plants such as monkey flower and columbine. The tall, large-leaved mesic species of trees such as sycamore and cottonwood, found only in the riparian corridors, stand in stark contrast to the xeric species found on the adjacent lands. The unique aquatic habitat found in Montezuma Well, a collapsed limestone sinkhole, contains organisms found nowhere else in the world, which have evolved in response to the unique mineralization of the water. 

Open every day of the year, including Christmas day. Winter hours: 8 AM to 5 PM; Summer hours (May 30th through Labor Day): 8 AM to 6 PM Mountain Standard Time.