Located about an hour south of Phoenix and an hour north of Tucson, Arizona, Casa Grande Ruins National Monument is an archeological site with ruins from ancient Sonoran Desert people. The site includes the remains of a “Great House” and other walls of the community as well as irrigation ditches. The visitor center displays pottery and other artifacts found at the site. Ranger guided tours are led nearly hourly, but visitors are free to take a self-guided tour and there are numerous interpretive signs explaining the structures. The monument is under the supervision of the National Park Service and charges a fee which is good for 7 days. Each adult (16 years or older) will be charged $5.00. Children 15 and younger are free. Federal park passes are honored. The park is currently open 9am-5pm. We stopped and toured this interesting historic site for a couple of hours on our drive between Tucson and Phoenix.
The Casa Grande or “Great House” was built about 1350
The Casa Grande or “Great House” was named by early Spanish explorers in 1694. The site became our nation’s first archeological reserve with legal protection in 1892. The structure is four stories high and 60 feet long. The walls face the four cardinal points of the compass. A circular hole in the upper west wall aligns with the setting sun at the summer solstice. Other openings align with the sun and moon at specific times. This mysterious Great House was completed about 1350. It was built with caliche, a concrete-like mix of sand, clay, and calcium carbonate (limestone). It took 3,000 tons to build the Great House. For wall, roof and floor supports, the Ancestral People used hundreds of juniper, pine, and fir trees which were carried or floated 60 miles down the Gila River to the village.
The walls of the Great House are 4 feet thick at the base
The Ancestral People, Huhugham, had origins to the hunter-gatherers who lived in Arizona for several thousand years and to the Meso-American civilization. They lived in permanent settlements along the Salt and Gila Rivers. To irrigate their fields, villagers cooperated to build and manage vast canal systems that diverted water from the rivers. In areas without year-round streams, they tapped groundwater or diverted storm runoff.
Artifacts are on display in the visitor center
An artist’s rendering of life at Casa Grande
From the Casa Gande Ruins National Monument website: “The crops grown by the ancient Sonoran Desert people eventually grew to include not only corn but several varieties of beans and squash, as well as cotton and tobacco. In addition to their crops, the Hohokam culture continued to make use of the many native plants and animals of the desert. These included cactus fruits, pads and buds, agave hearts (century plant), mesquite beans, and the medicinal creosote bush. The local game included birds, squirrels, rabbits, snakes and lizards, as well as fish and clams from the rivers and canals. Larger game such as mule deer and bighorn sheep could be hunted in the mountains.”
There are multiple structures on the grounds
