Get ‘Well’ Soon
A Trip to the Lesser Visited Montezuma Well a Wintertime Treat
Story and photos by Seth Muller

Montezuma Well is one of three national monuments located in the Verde Valley area, the other two are Tuzigoot and Montezuma Castle. While many people visit Montezuma Castle — a quick hop off of Interstate 17, a larger number of people miss Tuzigoot and Montezuma Well. The latter is less than a 15-minute drive from the interstate.

By midmorning during a visit to Montezuma Well a few year ago, a small rush of holiday travelers had arrived. A total of four passenger cars partially filled the parking lot. Dozens of small birds served as the dominate population. They chirped at the sun from the high points on the juniper trees and hunted for berries on the ground below.

The well itself is a funnel-shaped limestone sink filled with a pond that is 55 feet deep and 370 feet across. Spring water flows up and maintains a constant 76 degrees year round. It attracted ancient Sinagua people who built ruins in the limestone alcoves that surround the sink. Along with the ruins, carvings and markings left by pioneers from the late 1880s show how the place has attracted people through time.

Montezuma Well exudes a magic beyond its ancient connections. From the sink, the spring water flows out of a swallet, or passage in the rock. The swallet is 150 feet long and the water roils out of it and pours into Wet Beaver Creek. The water carries 600 pounds of dissolved lime. Around the place where the swallet emerges, trunks of sycamores wind and reach into the sky.

Before the spring waters merge with the creek, an irrigation ditch carries the flow along the edges. The ditch is one of several carved out and leading to open fields to the south of the well. One of the larger fields now serves as a picnic area, and the small channels crisscross it.

In a strange story I came across while researching the Centennial, I read this banner headline for the May 21, 1948 edition of The Coconino Sun: “Diver Encounters Swarms of Leeches in Montezuma Well.” It turns out Navy diver was exploring the Well, located in the Verde Valley, to determine its overall size and depth. This was previously unknown. As was the fact that it was filled, at the time, with hundreds of leeches that swarmed him as he descended.

Leeches aside, the lushness of Montezuma Well offers a quiet (and warmer) place in the winter, where the sound of the water’s trickle speaks of a spring to come. The place becomes a reminder that all humans are drawn to the watery places in the high desert.