Montezuma Peak is a

summit A summit is a point on a surface that is higher in elevation than all points immediately adjacent to it. The topographic terms acme, apex, peak (mountain peak), and zenith are synonymous. The term (mountain top) is generally used only for ...

Cochise County Cochise County ( ) is a county in the southeastern corner of the U.S. state of Arizona. It is named after Cochise, a Chiricahua Apache who was a key war leader during the Apache Wars. The population was 125,447 at the 2020 census. The county ...

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

, United States.

Description

Montezuma Peak is located south of the city of Sierra Vista in

Coronado National Memorial The Coronado National Memorial commemorates the first organized expedition into the Southwest by conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado in 1540. The memorial is located in a natural setting on the Mexico–United States border on the southea ...

. It is the highest point within the memorial which is administered by the National Park Service, and the 10th-highest summit in the

Huachuca Mountains The Huachuca Mountains are part of the Sierra Vista Ranger District of the Coronado National Forest in Cochise County in southeastern Arizona, approximately south-southeast of Tucson and southwest of the city of Sierra Vista. Included in this ...

. The mountain is composed of

dacite Dacite () is a volcanic rock formed by rapid solidification of lava that is high in silica and low in alkali metal oxides. It has a fine-grained (aphanitic) to porphyritic texture and is intermediate in composition between andesite and rhyolite. ...

tuff Tuff is a type of rock made of volcanic ash ejected from a vent during a volcanic eruption. Following ejection and deposition, the ash is lithified into a solid rock. Rock that contains greater than 75% ash is considered tuff, while rock co ...

and

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

.''Coronado National Memorial, Geologic Resources Inventory Report''
National Park Service, August 2011. The slopes are covered by oak woodlands, silk tassel,

sumac Sumac or sumach ( , )—not to be confused with poison sumac—is any of the roughly 35 species of flowering plants in the genus ''Rhus'' (and related genera) of the cashew and mango tree family, Anacardiaceae. However, it is '' Rhus coriaria ...

, pointleaf manzanita,

agave ''Agave'' (; ; ) is a genus of monocots native to the arid regions of the Americas. The genus is primarily known for its succulent and xerophytic species that typically form large Rosette (botany), rosettes of strong, fleshy leaves. Many plan ...

yucca ''Yucca'' ( , YUCK-uh) is both the scientific name and common name for a genus native to North America from Panama to southern Canada. It contains 50 accepted species. In addition to yucca, they are also known as Adam's needle or Spanish-bayon ...

, and

sotol Sotol is a distilled spirit made from the plants of the genus ''Dasylirion'', which grow in the Chihuahuan desert of northern Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona, and west and central Texas. Sotol liquor is known as the state spirit of Chihuahua; how ...

. Precipitation runoff from this peak's slopes drains east to the San Pedro River drainage basin.

Topographic relief Terrain (), alternatively relief or topographical relief, is the dimension and shape of a given surface of land. In physical geography, terrain is the lay of the land. This is usually expressed in terms of the elevation, slope, and orientati ...

is significant as the summit rises above Montezuma Canyon in 0.8 mile (1.3 km). Coronado Cave is set within the south slope of the peak. The nearest higher neighbor is Miller Peak, to the northwest. The mountain's toponym was officially adopted in 1959 by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names.United States Board on Geographic Names, ''Decisions on Names in the United States and Puerto Rico, Decision List No. 5903'', 1960, page 8.

Climate

According to the

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification divides Earth climates into five main climate groups, with each group being divided based on patterns of seasonal precipitation and temperature. The five main groups are ''A'' (tropical), ''B'' (arid), ''C'' (te ...

system, Montezuma Peak is located in a

semi-arid climate A semi-arid climate, semi-desert climate, or steppe climate is a dry climate sub-type. It is located on regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not as low as a desert climate. There are different kinds of se ...

zone with mild winters and hot summers. Summer starts off dry, but progressively gets wetter as the monsoon season approaches during the months of July and August. Summer nights are comfortably cool, and temperatures drop quickly after sunset. Winters are cold, but daytime highs are usually above freezing. Winter temperatures below are uncommon, though possible. This area receives less than of annual rainfall, and snowfall is generally light during the winter.

References

External links

* Weather forecast
Montezuma Peak
{{Portal bar, Mountains, Geography, Geology, Arizona Mountains of Cochise County, Arizona Two-thousanders of the United States Mountains of Arizona