# @downinnadesert on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DdaNgYrGmjm
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/70597294-downinnadesert-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/4b7485fd08.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-09-18T01:03:24.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Down In The Desert🌵 (@downinnadesert) — https://gondola.cc/downinnadesert

## Caption

These cliff dwellings stood for about 500 years and nearly came apart in eight.

People had lived in Arizona’s Tonto Basin for thousands of years. By the late 1200s, communities were farming along the Salt River and building homes into the cliffs above it.

The dwellings still standing today were built in the 1200s and occupied until around 1450.

Archaeologists use the name Salado for the people associated with these communities, but that wasn’t what they called themselves. Their culture developed in an area where traditions from ancestral Sonoran Desert and Ancestral Puebloan peoples came together. Their descendants still live in Arizona today.

Then everything around the dwellings started changing.

Ranchers and soldiers arrived in the basin in the 1800s. In 1903, construction began on Roosevelt Dam just a few miles away.

Workers and visitors climbed into the centuries-old dwellings and removed artifacts as souvenirs. Theodore Roosevelt declared the site Tonto National Monument in 1907, in part to protect it from further damage and looting.

But tourism continued. After the dam was completed, visitors were brought to the ruins, and historical accounts describe parts of the site being altered to make access easier.

Then Roosevelt Lake filled.

The reservoir covered much of the valley where these communities once farmed and lived. Archaeological sites remain beneath the water today, occasionally becoming more visible when lake levels fall.

Now you can hike about half a mile to the Lower Cliff Dwelling and stand inside rooms built more than 700 years ago, overlooking a lake covering much of the landscape their builders once knew.

It’s about two hours from Phoenix on State Route 188.

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#TontoNationalMonument #RooseveltLake #TontoBasin #ArizonaHistory #DownInnaDesert

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## Credits

No public credits are recorded here. This does not identify who made the post.

## Tags

tontobasin, downinnadesert, arizonahistory, rooseveltlake, tontonationalmonument

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