After leaving Tucson we stopped off near Casa Grande, AZ to visit the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument.  The Casa Grande ruins is what is left of the ancient Sonoran Desert people.  The date at which their village was created is unknown but is thought to have been occupied for possibly a thousand years. The Casa Grande was abandoned around 1450 C.E. Since the ancient Sonoran Desert people who built it left no written language behind, written historic accounts of the Casa Grande begin with the journal entries of Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino when he visited the ruins in 1694. In his description of the large ancient structure before him, he wrote the words “casa grande” (or “great house”) which are still used today. More became known about the ruins with the later visits of Lt. Col. Juan Bautista de Anza’s expedition in 1775 and Brig. Gen. Stephen Watts Kearny’s military detachment in 1846. Subsequent articles written about the Casa Grande increased public interest. During the 1860’s through the 1880’s more people began to visit the ruins with the arrival of a railroad line twenty miles to the west and a connecting stagecoach route that ran right by the Casa Grande. The resulting damage from souvenir hunting, graffiti and outright vandalism raised serious concerns about the preservation of the Casa Grande.  It later became a part of the National Park system to help preserve the remaining structure.

While walking around the ruins you have to imagine the hard life these people led.  They had massive farming in the area and had long, long trenches for irrigation.  We were told they did not have any metal tools.  It is also believed they didn’t have the wheel either so everything was done by hand.  I don’t think most people can imagine that there were complete active communities in the US so far back.  There are a lot of these types of National Monuments out west and we hope to hit more of them.

We stayed here a few hours before heading south of Phoenix to Carrabbas for a late Valentine’s dinner.  We only stayed 2 nights in the area so there wasn’t much time for anything else.

Next stop will be Slab City and Salvation Mountain in CA.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 27th, 2010 at 2:28 pm and is filed under Everyday Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.