Part of the large room above was kept clear of furniture so that it could be used for a variety of purposes, including schooling of the children and church services.

This is the first location on the tour where you can see gunports high on the walls, reminding you that this was not just a ranch house, but a fortified ranch house. Today the gunports are closed by Plexiglas, but when the ranch families lived here, they remained open. The heat from the small stove was probably very welcome on cold winter mornings.

In the ceiling of the meeting room is the entrance to the lookout tower. The intent was to boost a person -- possibly a young child -- into the tower, where he or she could keep watch and warn of Indian attacks. The tower offered a commanding view to the west, east, and south, as well as a portion of the hillside immediately to the north of the fort.

But Winsor Castle never served its intended role as a fort staving off attack. Before the fort was

completed in 1872, a peace affirmation was made with the Navajo, the southern tribe the settlers feared the most. You can see in the photo above that the cat-walk system possibly planned below the high gunports was never completed. Without this cat-walk, it would have been very difficult to use the gunports, which are nearly eight feet above floor level.

Later, a door (to the left in the photo above) was installed in the west wall to allow access to the outside. Because Winsor Castle is set back into a low hillside, it is only a single step from this door to ground level. The photo to the left shows both this door and the lookout tower with flagpole on the roof of the west building.