A Poison Well in the Desert

The spooky, mesmerizing history of Montezuma Well

This week I must be very careful with what I tell you. So ominous! In the literary world, anything written online is considered published. And most literary outlets will not accept previously published work. Because I have been working on a collection of essays about water for several years and very much want to see the collection published formally into a book, I’ve been careful not to publish anything in The Hag that I also hoped would be published into said book. But this week, I want to tell you just a bit about a fascinating place called Montezuma Well. If the information in this post feels thin and you find yourself wanting more, know that I’m doing my darndest to get a longer essay published through more traditional means. Hopefully, you’ll be able to read more about this place soon. 

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Last Sunday, J and I went to Montezuma Well National Monument in Rimrock, Arizona. I had been there once before about 20 years ago (what a delicious and horrifying thing to be old enough to be able to say) on a family vacation and my memory of the place held up surprisingly well for a 9-year-old turned 29-year-old. 

The parking area shows very little promise, just a rolling hilly area covered in thousands of creosote bushes. But follow the paved path up the hill behind the visitor center and an enormous sinkhole opens up, filled with 15 million gallons of spring water, while prehistoric cliff dwellings line the circular expanse. The place feels exceptionally ancient and disturbingly alive. I had the same feeling I did 20 years ago of being watched, not by the other visitors, but by something more ethereal, as though the water itself were glancing back at me.

I read all of the plaques posted around the well (and learned so much more than I did when I was nine) but it wasn’t until I got back to the camper and started aggressively Google searching (as one does) that I began to understand what was behind that uneasiness I felt as I looked over the rim into the blue water. 

The first fact that made my bones tingle is that the 1.5 million gallons of water that bubble up through the bottom of the well each day originated as 10,000-year-old snowmelt from nearby Mogollon Rim. That’s how much water is pressed between the palms of desert rock. That’s how long it takes to move water from one place to another. This oasis in the desert is ancient. The water itself is primal. 

What exactly about this made me feel a little dizzy? I’m not 100 percent sure. All water on earth exists in a closed system and for all intents and purposes came into existence around the same time. Meaning all water is billions of years old, even the seemingly “new” water flowing from your kitchen sink or running down your bathtub drain. This 10,000-year-old water is really multi-billion-year-old water, just like all the other water. But there is something about knowing with near-perfect precision that the water collected in this hole in the desert was most recently 10,000-year-old snow, witnessed by very early humans, that just made me want to lie down. 

Standing at the edge of the well, I had an insatiable urge to drink this primordial water, to fill my body with its seasoned, wise nourishment.

Which brings me to the second fact: Due to natural deposits, the water in the well is heavily poisoned with arsenic. About 20 years after irrigation from Montezuma Well peaked, the Sinagua (an early ancestor of the Hopi) unexplainably abandoned the region. But research suggests they may have taken the symptoms of arsenic poisoning (goiters and black foot disease) as a spiritual signal that it was time to migrate out of the area. Or it’s possible that the accumulating arsenic killed all of their crops. Turtle bones found in the cliff dwellings (a staple of the Sinagua diet) show arsenic levels as high as 229 mg per kg, about 220 mg per kg higher than average. It’s very likely arsenic was bioaccumulating in many facets of their diets, slowly poisoning the entire community.

Again, I can’t perfectly put my finger on what it is about the arsenic-laden water that spooks me, but the place feels more haunted than holy in the face of this information. The empty rock dwellings take on a much more fearful tone. I can’t shake the feeling that these people must have felt cursed as their flesh literally rotted off their bones and their neurological systems shattered. 

There is much more to say about this place — like the ability of leeches and water scorpions (found nowhere else on earth!) to thrive in this poisonous water, or the fact that the water stays at a nearly constant temperature and level, and also that divers have never been able to fully find the bottom of the well — but hopefully all of that, and then some, will be published more formally later on. I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, enjoy this fascinating video of divers exploring Montezuma Well.

Also, if you’re into spooky water stories or just fascinating watery things, Geo Rutherford runs a fantastic TikTok account (yep, I’m pretty much all in on TikTok) on lakes, water, and more that will leave you deeply fascinated and pleasantly informed.