Montezuma Castle National Monument

Montezuma Castle National Monument protects a well-preserved cliff dwelling at Camp Verde, together with Castle A, a contemporaneous dwelling site nearby. Both are attributed to the Southern Sinagua, a pre-Columbian archaeological culture that may be closely related to several ancestral indigenous peoples of the south-western United States. Archaeological evidence indicates the dwelling was built as early as 1125 AD and occupied until as late as 1395. Many Native American communities trace their ancestry to the groups who lived in and around it. The monument was misnamed by European-American settlers, who wrongly attributed the structure to the Aztecs, and the dwelling is viewed from the trail below rather than entered. It recorded 379,967 recreation visits in 2024.

Where it is

Montezuma Castle National Monument is a national monument near Camp Verde, in Yavapai County. It is one of the national monuments in this database, and appears in the statewide ranking of Arizona attractions.

How this ranking was reached

The score combines the published visitor count with public interest and tourism significance, which is what earns it high confidence. The weighting is explained in full on the methodology page, and every axis is broken out under Facts and sources at the foot of this page.

Note on the data: The 2025 series reports zero recreation visits for month 10, a reporting gap rather than a measured figure, so 2024 is used as the reference year.

Mentioned in

• Arizona has three national parks, and one of them takes 77 per cent of the visits — Grand Canyon recorded 4,919,163 visits in 2024 against 1,505,623 for Saguaro and Petrified Forest combined — more than three times the other two together.

Sources

• Visitation: National Park Service Visitor Use Statistics(opens in a new tab)
• Public interest: Wikimedia pageviews (en.wikipedia, human traffic), 2024
• Coordinates and designations: Wikidata(opens in a new tab)
• County: U.S. Census geography via FCC Area API, resolved from coordinates
• Official site: https://www.nps.gov/moca/(opens in a new tab)

Record last verified 2026-08-12.