Creating a Home

Residents constructed their cliff home by using a naturally eroded alcove and fitting 20 rooms to its contours. Possible reasons for building in the cliff face included proximity to water and farmland, staying above floods, protection, the view, and southern exposure that provided winter solar heat and summer shade. The shelter reduced the need to build as many walls and roofs for housing, storage, workspace, customs, and rituals. Builders organized and divided the alcove with walls of river cobbles and limestone held together with mud mortar, then covered and sealed them with mud plaster. For roof beams and floors between multistoried rooms, they mainly used local sycamore with some alder and ash, and also carried in fir and pine from farther away. Original roof beams still visible near and above the tower show that the Castle is not as high up or as large as it might appear. Each group living in the Castle likely had its own room, averaging roughly 140 square feet, or about 17.5 feet by 8 feet, with ceilings about 5 feet high. Peep holes and doorways brought light during the morning and early afternoon, but rooms grew dark in the late afternoon and evening. Women or children likely did the plastering, including annual patching of exterior walls that eroded easily, and their handprints remain visible in the plaster today.

Arizona · United States