Trevor Huxham

Right off an interstate highway in central Arizona, a national monument protects prehistoric multi-story apartments nestled inside a limestone cliff, old canals that once fed water to crops in the desert, and even a pond where five unique species have evolved. But everything about the name of this park is just…totally, totally wrong. Montezuma Castle? More like Sinagua Cliff Dwellings When clueless Anglo settlers moved into the Verde Valley in the late 1800s and encountered these dwellings, they used the name of an Aztec ruler whose empire stretched across southern Mexico 1,300 miles away. Montezuma’s name, unfortunately, has stuck. “Sinagua” would be more accurate. It’s the term archaeologists apply to the Indigenous people who lived in central and northern Arizona between around 500 and 1500 CE. The Spanish words for “without water” or “waterless” have been used to refer to these people because they made do with little rainfall, diverting preci...

What remains of a multi-room complex “Is this it?” I thought while walking back to my car. Compared to the Ancestral Puebloan dwellings I had visited the day before at nearby Wupatki National Monument , the low stone walls at Homolovi State Park didn’t do much to convince me that a complex of more than a thousand rooms once stood on this patch of northern Arizona. High Desert Housing But unlike Wupatki, it was clear that this lonely grassland once teemed with the residents of those thousand-plus rooms. Potsherds were everywhere!

Cliff dwellings It’s 4:00 p.m. and I’m in a race against time: after having driven through Wupatki and Sunset Crater Volcano national monuments earlier in the day, I’ve got just one hour to visit the last of the Flagstaff-area monuments before closing time. The park ranger at the front desk lets me continue through the visitor center after I display my annual parks pass, and once I’m back outside, I quickly descend a steep set of stairs while managing to  not  fall off the cliffside of Walnut Canyon National Monument.  Just 185 vertical feet later, and I’ve made it down to the trail that loops around an “island” floating above a meander of Walnut Canyon.

When you think of ruins, what comes to your mind? Maybe the flattened apartment blocks of Roman Pompeii , a once-glistening palace for a Moorish caliph , or the spindly skeleton of a Lisbon church . For many Americans, our imaginations often turn to history-rich Europe, where the remains of empires, wars, and natural disasters are easy to see. But that’s a shame, because we can find reminders of the past in our own backyards. Nalakihu Pueblo Sure, they may not be on the same scale as Mexico’s monumental pyramids in Teotihuacán or Chichén Itzá, but the cliff dwellings and villages built by Ancestral Puebloans make the Southwestern U.S. the best place in the country to encounter places that were inhabited almost a thousand years ago. Colorado’s Mesa Verde and New Mexico’s Chaco Culture are some of the biggest marks the ancestors of today’s Puebloan peoples left on the Southwest, but they’re either in the isolated Four Corners region, off long dirt roads, or both. Wupatki Natio...

The ruins It’s 9:00 a.m. on a Saturday in June and it’s already 100º F as I drive down a highway that’s 14 lanes at its widest point. Heading south out of Phoenix, I pass through exurbs of stucco houses, strip malls, and one chain restaurant after another. It’s not long before I exit the sprawl and enter into the vast irrigated fields of Pinal County, Arizona. Layers of construction The miles pass by as I switch from one state highway to the next. Water from aquifers, from the Gila River, or carried uphill across the state from Lake Mead fills concrete-lined irrigation canals, forming a moat between the blacktop and bright green fields. Lonely farmhouses are surrounded by Italian cypress, Australian eucalyptus, or shaggy California fan palms, themselves forming another kind of moat around homes. All this continues until the fields give way to the natural creosote flats of the Sonoran Desert. A huge structure dominates this clearing: a crumbling earthen tower capped with a m...

Whenever I’m on a trip that involves taking a lot of public transit, I often think about how many “layers deep” I am in connections that have brought me where I currently am. A Travel Inception, if you will. Greek ruins + the Mediterranean As part of my exploration of northeast Spain two years ago, I left my initial base in the Gràcia neighborhood (1) of Barcelona up to Girona (2), and from Girona I daytripped to Figueres (3), going further north from Figueres that same day to the tiny coastal resort of L’Escala (4). I was seven layers deep, counting the shuttle to the airport in Santiago de Compostela (5), the flight from Santiago to Barcelona (6), and the commuter train ride into central Barcelona (7). But if you also count one of the most ancient ruins in Spain as a time travel machine, it adds up to eight. What is Empúries? Mosaic scene in the museum If the name Empúries reminds you of a Victorian-era emporium, you’d be right on the money, as these ruin...

It’s no secret on this blog that I’m a big fan of Roman ruins —see my posts on the aqueduct of Segovia , the lost city of Pompeii , and the amphitheater of Nîmes , just to name a few. So it was only natural for me and my traveling friend Melissa to make a daytrip last year from Avignon in southern France  to one of the most emblematic of all French monuments: the Pont du Gard.  This Roman site’s elegant name (pronounced “pon dew gahr” [pɔ̃ dy gaʁ]) belies the fact that it simply functioned as a bridge to carry spring-fed water over the Gardon River to the Roman city of Nemausus (modern Nîmes). The Pont du Gard from the southeast This feat of Roman engineering left Melissa and me astonished at just how huge it was: 48.8m high (160 feet) and 275m long (902 feet) on the upper deck. Dressed limestone blocks still hold the structure together without any mortar at all, almost two millennia after construction, while the aqueduct’s channel imperceptibly drops an inch in alti...

I wanted to like Nîmes. I really did. The day before, my traveling buddy Melissa and I had made a daytrip from Avignon in southern France to the neighboring city of Arles , famous for its Roman monuments and twice-weekly market . Rain showers in the morning gave way to late-winter sunshine in the afternoon that illuminated the Roman arena and theater that once again host shows and performances, as they did 2,000 years ago. Enter Nîmes, another mid-sized southern French city bestrewn with Roman ruins. Pronounced “neem” [nim], this city was high on my bucket list for its Maison Carrée , an exquisitely-preserved Roman temple, and its Arènes , or Roman amphitheater. But frustrating our daytrip plans were the relentless winter rains; we felt as if we had simply caught Nîmes on a bad day, when all it wanted was to hide in bed with a good book and a cup of tea. Nevertheless, after our high-speed train pulled into a grand, two-story train station that dates back to the 1840s (!), we ope...

Bundling up in boots, skinny jeans, and scarves while spending Thanksgiving with family a couple weeks ago in Indiana reminded me of the last time the weather was that cold: late February, when my friend Melissa and I traveled around southern France from our home base in Avignon . We were so fed up with the miserable cold, rainy weather in Santiago de Compostela that we decided to hop on over to France’s Mediterranean coast—where you would think  things would be warm and sunny—only to be greeted with more rain and cold weather. I guess you can’t have everything. Place de la République But it’s easy to beat the winter blues when you’re in one of the most beautiful parts of Europe, rain or shine. Avignon welcomed us in for four nights and turned out to be a cozy city overflowing with history. We took advantage of Avignon’s central location and good rail connections to make daytrips to various towns around Provence, once of which was the Roman city of Arles, a mere 17-minute...

The ruins It began as a passing blur, a brief break in between thick trees and rural farms as the train headed south out of Santiago. What did I just see?  I wondered. Later, I would catch passing references to the crumbling foundations of a long-forgotten fortress, hiding in plain sight just outside of town. Then I came across banners advertising what was once “the largest castle in Galicia.” In a town known for its cathedral , its granite-paved old town , and its pilgrim heritage, I was intrigued that there was something more unique to explore than yet another  over-the-top Baroque monastery . Completionist that I am, I added the ruins of the Rocha Forte to my Santiago bucket list and finally went hiking into the countryside one sunny May afternoon. Foxgloves nearby Even after living in Europe for three years, this history major never lost the thrill of stumbling across a church whose doors had welcomed the faithful for a thousand years, walking over glass-cove...

The land that we call Spain today belonged to the Roman Empire for nearly 600 years, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we can find countless relics dating from this time period across the country—not least the Castilian language itself, which derives from the Latin the Romans imposed on Hispania. Coming from a part of the U.S. where it’s a big deal to catch a glimpse of a truck that’s only half a century old , I naturally gravitated to places like ancient Roman ruins as I made my way from one region of Spain to another. This country has so much Roman heritage to offer—on par with Italy or France!—so read on to learn where to go in Spain for your ancient ruin fix. 1) City of Mérida Roman theater Today the capital of vast, lonely Extremadura in western Spain, Mérida was founded as a settlement of emeritus (veteran) soldiers along the Guadiana River. Emerita Augusta  would become the capital of Lusitania province (which included modern-day Portugal and Extremadura) an...

Usually when you think of Roman ruins —in Spain or elsewhere—usually things like crumbling arches, faded mosaics, and fallen-in house walls come to mind. Sometimes there’s a grand aqueduct , and maybe even an amphitheater , but all the sculptures, gravestones, and artifacts are on display in a nearby museum . In any case, you’ll most often see memorials to important dead guys or monumental ruins. Las Médulas That’s why I was so surprised when I visited  Las Médulas:  all that is left of the largest gold mine in the Roman Empire.  Although the modern Spanish word médula  can mean “bone marrow” or “spinal cord,” the name for these mining ruins probably comes from the Latin  metula , the diminutive form of the word meta , which meant “cone” or “pyramid”—which makes sense given the other-worldly rock formations that make up the ruins. Close-up shot Hidden away in the rugged Bierzo region in northwesterly León province, the open-pit mine has sliced th...

Castro ruins If you chase the western coast of Galicia all the way south to the Portuguese border, you’ll end up at the mouth of the Miño River and the compact fishing village of A Guarda, too. I took a daytrip to this remote corner of northwest Spain while exploring Vigo back in January and really enjoyed this quiet—and historical—taste of coastal Galicia. Castro ruins After a glorious seaside lunch of croquetas  and steamed mussels, I left the city center of A Guarda and began hiking up Mt. Santa Trega. The footpath passed through eucalyptus and pine woods, and even a rainshower. But after a brief, 45-minute climb, I emerged at the summit, the site of some pre-Roman ruins. Called a castro,  these walled, Celtic-era settlements consisted of circular stone huts capped with thatched roofs, and they endured throughout the Roman period. The castro de Santa Trega  is one of the most famous in all Galicia, simply because the archaeological work done over the cen...

I’m a big supporter of Doing What You Want when traveling: of seeing and doing things that you like rather than feeling obligated to mark things off your guidebook’s Top 10 Must-See list. You end up enjoying your travels the most when you focus on the things that interest you —even if that means skipping an “unmissable” sight somewhere else. Roman road I say all this to say… I went to the ruined Roman city of Pompeii in December because I am the biggest nerd ever. Pompeii may not be an obscure or unique place to visit when compared with others that Italy has to offer, but when I made my “Grand Tour” of Italy over Christmas Break, I passed over Venice (which is typically considered an essential stop, and which I had zero  desire to visit) in favor of Pompeii, a place I’ve dreamed for years of seeing one day in person. Studying Latin and learning about Pompeii Wave mosaics I’ve had this urge to go on a pilgrimage to this well-preserved Roman town ever since middle ...

In between moving out of Úbeda and going up north to hike the Camino de Santiago this June, I stopped off for two nights in Mérida, the capital city of the westerly Extremadura region. For the longest time, I had wanted to visit this town because of its well-preserved Roman ruins. After all, Mérida, or Emerita Augusta in Latin, was once the capital of the Lusitania  imperial province that included most of modern-day Portugal as well as west-central Spain. Because of that status, it was bestowed with all the standard things you’d expect out of a Roman city: buildings like theaters, forums, arenas, and temples. Despite 2,000 years of history passing through the region, much of Mérida’s ruins are surprisingly still intact. Toga-wearing tourists at the theater Aqueduct View this post on Instagram Trains heading out of Mérida pass through the Los Milagros Roman aqueduct. You know, just no big deal for this city....

Although the fascinating mix of Arab and Berber cultures was what drew me to Morocco this spring, something else spoke to my inner history major: the crumbling skeleton of a once-flourishing Roman city. This place, called V OLUBILIS by the Romans and Oualili by the Berbers, is one of the most important Roman sites in north Africa, yet many tourists to Morocco have never even heard of the ruins or shy away from making a day-trip from the imperial city of Meknes. Read on to learn why it’s worth putting on your Moroccan itinerary. Strolling down the Decumanus Maximus How do you say “boloo-blah-blah”? Roman inscription recording the name of the city Okay this one’s a little tricky. In Classical Latin it would have been pronounced “woe-LOO-bee-lees” [woˈlu.bi.lis], not far removed from the Berber Oualili  or Walili . For English-speakers, however, it’s probably fine to voice the V since that’s what the French do as well. Go ahead—you can say it out loud if you like! “vo...