Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, Globe Arizona, Besh Ba Gowah, Windy Hill Recreation Site, Tonto National Monument, Roosevelt Lake and Dam
March 20-23, 2023
From Tucson Mountain Park and Saguaro National Park West I headed northeast on quiet, secondary highways to arrive at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument located on the outskirts of Coolidge, Arizona. This magnificent four-story building, part of a larger village complex, was completed around 1350 by the Hohokam peoples who created similar Great Houses in the region, all sited alongside systems of irrigation canals.
Casa Grande, named by early Spanish explorers, is built along north/south and east/west lines and is thought by modern archaeologists to have had astronomical and ceremonial purposes as openings align with the sun and moon at specific times including the summer solstice. Protected from the elements by a large shelter, access inside the monument is not possible, but a series of interpretive panels, as well as a small museum in the Visitors Centre, gave context to this impressive site and the people who built it.
The Hohokam, descended from hunter-gatherers who lived in Arizona for thousands of years, began to build permanent settlements around the Salt and Gila Rivers around the year 300 CE. They also built vast canal systems, tapped groundwater, and diverted storm runoff to irrigate their fields of squash, beans, corn, cotton, and agave, and they participated in extensive trade networks that stretched to the Pacific shores of California, the Colorado Plateau, the Great Plains, and northern and central Mexico. As well as their cultivated foods, the Hohokam availed themselves of all that the surrounding desert had to offer. They hunted rabbits and other small mammals as well as mule deer, javelina, and big horn sheep from the nearby mountains. They snared or hooked fish, waterfowl and turtles from the rivers and gathered wood and basketry materials from riverside stands of reeds, cottonwood, and willow. They gathered mesquite pods that were eaten whole or pounded into meal and they also ate wild amaranth, saguaro, cholla, hedgehog and prickly pear cactus fruits. It was an impressive existence in a harsh land of extremes, and I also marvelled at the puzzle-solving abilities of archaeologists who try to piece together and understand the complex array of cultures that migrated, inter-mingled, lived, built on, and transformed this land over the centuries and millennia.
From Casa Grande, I made my way to the very scenic Highway 60 that heads east up to and through a pass between the Superstition and the Pinal Mountains. Unfortunately, the road was very busy and fast with lots of truck traffic and it was almost impossible to stop for photos of the dramatic rocky hillsides. I did manage to pull over a few times,
and I absolutely had to stop to photograph this astounding mountain of tailings from a large copper mine outside of Miami, Arizona (it went on for miles!). This region of Arizona that I was travelling through was explored and mined in the 1800s by hunters of silver and gold, and later copper, and its modern-day mines hold some of the largest copper reserves in the United States.
Soon I reached the town of Globe and proceeded directly to the Besh Ba Gowah museum which features a partially reconstructed pueblo, built between the years 1250 and 1450 by the Salado. Culturally related to the Hohokam, and named after the Salt river by archaeologists, the Salado were farmers, hunters, crafts people, and traders. Excavated in the 1930s, this large site delivered the most extensive collection of Salado artefacts ever recovered.
The complex featured two-story homes, a central plaza, a ceremonial building, and rooms dedicated to specialized crafts that included jewellery making, weaving, basketry and decorated pottery. Like Casa Grande, this pueblo was part of a vast trading network. Shells from the Baja Peninsula, the California coast, and the Gulf of Mexico were found here, as well as brightly-coloured Macaw feathers and copper bells from Mexico. Many examples of pottery, decorated in different styles and created in different regions of Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico were also found here as well as a wide array of tools and household objects.
I spent a long time on the grounds and in the small but comprehensive museum here and continued to learn more about how the ancestral peoples of the area were able to use the resources of the desert to survive and flourish.
I then visited the town of Globe which first sprang up in the 1880s when silver and copper were found here. The main street features attractive Victorian-era brick buildings, many of which now house antique and second-hand shops, as well as cafes, bars, and western-themed saloons. The town is popular on weekends with visitors, tourists, and bargain-hunters arriving from Phoenix, Tucson, and elsewhere.
I was here on a weekday and most of the second-hand shops only have weekend hours, but luckily the Cobre Valley Center for the Arts, housed in the stately 1906 Gila County Courthouse, was open. Run by a member-supported non-profit, the centre sold a range of arts and crafts including paintings, pottery, jewellery, woodwork, metal work, photography, and some very beautiful quilts. There was even a rather fine collection of vintage clothing that was fun to browse through. I really enjoyed my time there, walking on old fir floors through tall-ceilinged rooms and admiring all of the creativity and artistry on display.
From Globe, I connected to Highway 188 for a beautiful drive north to the Windy Hill Recreation Site campground run by the Tonto National Forest Service. Sited above and beside the huge reservoir of Roosevelt Lake, the campground had many loops and hundreds of sites but it was not busy at all and I was able to choose a wonderful spot, well away from others and close to the lake. It was beginning to rain, and there was a cold wind blowing so I bundled up, quickly prepared a hot and spicy soup, and enjoyed my meal under the protective cover of my ramada, my eyes on the lake and the fast-moving clouds and my ears happy with the sound of heavy rain drops on the metal roof of my shelter. I was warm and dry, grateful for my meal, my day, and this beautiful place and I allowed myself to do nothing except sit quietly for good long a while. The rain eased off before night fell and I enjoyed a walk around the campsite and along the lake with so much bird life on display. There were ducks and other waterfowl on the lake, including a beautiful Clark’s grebe, and I startled several groups of quail from the bushes as I walked. Small birds flitted between the shrubs and trees, a roadrunner hunted on the grassy edge of the road, and I saw an osprey fly overhead with a good-sized fish clutched in its talons!
I slept well and rose early to another windy and overcast day that threatened rain. I took my time over breakfast and coffee, and then took a short walk around the campground. I was reluctant to leave this peaceful place, but I was also very excited to visit the nearby cliff dwellings of Tonto National Monument so off I went to arrive there just as it opened at 8. There are two ruins here, the Lower Ruin and the 40-room Upper Ruin which is only accessible on a 3-4 hour ranger-guided hike that must be booked long in advance. The Lower Ruin is accessible by way of a steep paved path that switchbacks up the side of a mountain, gaining 350 feet in a half mile. Below in the distance is Roosevelt Lake that was created by the damming of the Salt River in1911.
The hillside was thickly vegetated and there were interpretive panels all along the route that identified some of the plants and provided information about their characteristics and their medical, culinary, or functional uses by the Salado people. For example, the Banana yucca had multiple uses: the buds, flowers and fruits are edible, the sharp-tipped leaves were used as awls, and leaf fibres were woven into mats, sandals, string, ropes, nets and snares while the roots were used to make “an excellent soap and shampoo.” The panels provided a good excuse to stop and catch my breath, and I also stopped often to photograph some of the wildflowers growing on the hillside, including two very distinct types of lupin and some owl clover.
Soon I reached this view of the Upper Ruin which was built around 1300 and occupied until around 1450 CE. Constructed of rock and adobe mud, and making use of a natural cave at the top of a bluff, the rooms of the original dwelling housed about 30 people and their tools, possessions, and stores of food. Water was accessed from a spring far below, but there was also a 100 gallon cistern built on site.
I was the only visitor up there and I spent a good half hour or more with the volunteer guide learning about the people that had lived here. It is thought that the families here were primarily hunters who traded with the farming families that lived along the Salt River in the valley below. Archaeological evidence shows that they were also weavers and basket makers, and that they were part of the same vast trading network that included the people of Casa Grande and Besh Ba Gowah.
Visitors are allowed to walk among the ruins and into several of the small rooms. The wooden posts and roof structures on view are all original. Beams of Arizona walnut were crossed with saguaro cactus strips and then covered by a layer of clay and mud, and 700 year old handprints in the adobe can still be seen on some parts of the floors and walls.
The ruin faces east, with far-reading views over the mountains and Salt River valley, and the volunteer told me that she often sees mule deer and sometimes javelina in the gully below and that a canyon wren visits her daily. The view was indeed beautiful, even verdant, but the desert is still so full of dangers and the punishing extremes of heat and cold, floods and drought. To make a life here certainly required endless hard work, resilience, know-how, and strength. All three of the monuments that I visited in these two days, as well as many other large communal dwellings throughout central and northern Arizona were abandoned around the year 1450 and archaeologists continue to search for clues as to why. The principal conjecture is that many years of severe drought lead to crop failures and a paucity of resources from the desert which then caused competition and warfare among groups as well as migration out of the region. Thankfully, all three of these monuments are protected and continue to be studied so that further knowledge can be acquired to help preserve the past, enrich the present, and guide the future.
From the Tonto National Monument I drove the short distance to see the Roosevelt Lake Bridge that carries traffic on Highway 188,
and then the Roosevelt Dam which was built at the confluence of the Salt River and Tonto Creek in 1911 to help with flood control and water management downstream. I couldn’t help but think about how much archaeological evidence of human occupation along the upper Salt River must have been lost when the valley behind this dam was flooded.
My next destination was Lost Dutchman State Park for two nights of camping. I had originally intended to travel there via State Route 88 which is a narrow and winding gravel road through the Superstition Mountains. Signs warned me though that a section of the road ahead was impassable due to a landslide so I reversed direction, travelled back on 188 towards Globe and then west on Highway 60 which was thankfully less busy than when I first drove it so I was able to travel a bit slower to appreciate the dramatic mountain scenery. Hopefully, I can travel State Route 88 on my next visit to Arizona when I will definitely camp again at Windy Hill and return to the Tonto National Monument to participate in the guided hike to the Upper Ruin. There is still so much to see and learn!
Thank you for joining me on this journey! 🙂
