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| Purtymun Cave Cliff Dwellings, AZ | |
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| | Purtymun Cave Cliff Dwellings, AZ | | | |
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Purtymun Cave Cliff Dwellings, AZ
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| partners | | I'm long overdue in posting a triplog for this one, but it's been just over a year since I visited this site, and it turned out that it was my last hike with my regular group of hiking partners before the pandemic hit. A friend-of-a-friend generously volunteered to show us some fairly obscure, difficult-to-reach cliff dwelling sites.
He brought two of his friends, so a group of six of us set out for some exploring. The first site he showed us that morning was a spot he referred to as the "Purtymun Cave" because of some engraved stones near the cliff dwellings. Three of the four walls in the main structure had a fair amount of mortar intact, but large sections of the walls were badly deteriorated. An interesting aspect of this site was a pair of stone slabs nearby with 1901 and four names engraved on them: A. Purtymun, C. Thompson, J.F. Thompson, and Pearl Purtymun. I've seen various names from the Purtymun family carved into multiple cliff dwelling sites scattered across at least three different canyons, with dates ranging from the 1900s to 1920s. I've read that the family lived in the Oak Creek area in the late 1800s/early 1900s and built the namesake [ Purtymun Trail ] in the 1890s near Oak Creek Canyon to get to and from Flagstaff.
It was an interesting site, with history dating back hundreds of years for the cliff dwellings and more recent history from the late 19th/early 20th century with the engraved stones. The climb to and from that spot had a fair amount of exposure, enough that some members of the group used rope to help get up and back down. Our friend's group had other plans for the afternoon, so they had to take off but gave us general directions to a few other cliff dwelling sites in the area, and my group and I were successful in finding most of them over the course of the day. It was a great pre-pandemic finale hike for the group with some cool history and fantastic scenery. |
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