A Cliff Dwelling Misnamed, a Village Built From Scratch

Montezuma Castle has nothing to do with Montezuma. Soldiers who came through the Verde Valley in 1864 saw the five-story cliff dwelling and, familiar with the Aztec empire from the Mexican War, assumed only an Aztec civilization could have built something so advanced — so they named it after the Aztec emperor. The structure was actually built between 1100 and 1350 by the Sinagua, a farming people with no connection to the Aztecs, and Montezuma himself almost certainly never set foot anywhere near Arizona. The name stuck anyway and the National Park Service still uses it today.

Tlaquepaque, by contrast, was never trying to be an ancient ruin — it was built to look like one. Nevada developer Abe Miller spent two years persuading the landowners to sell him their sycamore grove, promising to build around the trees rather than clear them, then hired an architect who took him on a research trip through small-town Mexico before laying a single brick. The construction crew was made up of amateur, self-taught plasterers given full creative freedom — if they weren't happy with a wall, Miller let them tear it down and redo it. The result, opened in 1973, was designed from the start to feel decades older than it is.