Montezuma's Treasure Vault?, Stone Ruins Discovered While Prospecting Options

[ASTROBLEME]

My wife and I discovered an ancient stone ruins site while prospecting for gold back in 2013.

The site consists of three structures that are constructed onto the natural steep slope of the side of a dry arroyo leading down to a river a few miles away. A query to U.S. Department of Interior returns no knowledge of any previous investigation or other documentation of this site.

My first impression was that it may have been a mining or homestead site, a kiln or storage area in the shelter of the arroyo. After looking it over closely, it was apparent that it was built long ago due to the 10 foot depth of erosion observed from the base of the structures to the present bottom of the channel. There isn’t a historic wagon road or trail to the site. There is no near source of water. It appeared to me to resemble the cliff dwellings in SW Colorado more than anything else I’ve seen.

The largest of the ruins is a round structure of crude unshaped natural stone blocks, essentially forming a tower with a solid flat top. The mortar material of the 'tower' and the smaller rectangular structures nearby appears to be a kind of course cement made up of pebbles and gravel found locally. The possible ceremonial aspect that gets my attention is the platform at the base that points towards a notch in the horizon at 245 degree (m), the near angle of the summer solstice sunset. There is a possibility that the tower covers an underground tunnel dug into the soft siltstone-shale that forms the bank of the arroyo. The structures might have been covered over after being built by simply pushing down the steep slope some of the fill and alluvial materials found uphill of the ruins.

There is still much to be learned at this site and I would appreciate any ideas that you might have. Presently, I am looking into the possibility that these stone ruins may have been constructed by one of the 7 caravans that traveled north with Montezuma’s Aztec Treasure. For sure, the Conquistadors were present in this area spanning many decades after Cortez’s activity in present day Mexico.

[Woody]

Cool Thread! Possibilities abound. Wish I would have been watching this all along.

In my travels I’ve come a crossed a few of these Semi-circular stone walls. Almost all of those were used in shoring up steep drainages that were along some ol’ forgotten trail or path. You seem to have already covered this possibility and I see by the pictures that the top is fairly round and not horizontal or built flat into the hill side. So I’ll try to add a few different angles. Oddly enough, this is not the first time I have also seen one with an adjacent structure.

By chance have you tried to look at this site on google maps, “or similar”? My thoughts here are that with the dry arroyo and hills being so steep maybe all traces of the trail in the immediate area have been eroded away but with an expanded view you might be able to connect the dots so to speak. On a large scale you might be able to etch out where this site was an important midway point to a further destination. Kind of like a stagecoach stop, but obviously not.

As for the rocks by the Drainage Hole I suggest they appear to be a sort of half-circle cap stone. A few are missing and appear to have dropped down over time. This however would suggest being more of a decorative piece rather than something needed for functionality. “I know all my thoughts here are strictly flights of fancy and embellished, but here goes another one.” That flat stone at the end of the drainage hole looks to me to be usable for Catch Basin. And if that is the case the mystery of the Dome Structure could be solved.

A lot of natural seeps and springs today have a man-made covering or have been altered in some way to make their use more convenient to us. Most of them just have a pipe pounded into the wall and dump into a trough of some sort but a few have an earth covering that helps draw out the water. A simple explanation; Imagine if this was a support wall, the hole in the center would be necessary for drainage. Thoughts of control would need to be implemented into the design for Runoff. Trapped water behind a structure like that might quickly bring it down from just the mechanical weathering of freezing and thawing alone. One of the “by-products” of this type of design was the discovery that the drainage hole continued to weep long after the immediate runoff or storm had passed. That silt layer at the base of the large sandstone outcropping could easily have produced a small natural drainage years ago. Maybe someone built this structure in an attempt to channel a wide seep into a usable one.

The structure to the far right of the three is an Inny, not an Outty. Meaning who ever built this first removed a large volume of earth and then built the foundation into the hill. Most Native Americans were not to keen on building Innies. They normally improved upon already existing natural structures like building a wall around a hollow depression, resulting in an outty.

Here is a possible way to help date the site and plays into your well-house of expertise. I suggest you test the chemical composition of the mortar. Native Americans made this mortar differently than did European settlers. Europeans favored cement more so than mortar. Everyone knows that one of the ingredients of early cement was Ashes. One of the pics clearly show what looks to be ashes in the mix. Other ingredients used might help to establish a date, just like an index fossil.

Sorry so long. Hope you someday solve the mystery, Woody.