January 9, 2010 - Casa Grande Ruins National Monument

Casa Grande Ruins National Monument preserves remains of an ancient Hohokam farming village as well as the Great House. After a long battle with the desert, this ancient building still commands respect. Four stories high and 60 ft long, it is the largest known structure from Hohokam times. Early Spanish explores called it Casa Grande (Great House). Its walls face the four cardinal points of the compass. A circular hole in the upper west wall aligns the setting Sun at the summer solstice. Other openings align with the Sun and Moon at specific times. Knowing the changing positions of the celestial objects meant knowing times for planting, harvest, and celebration. Completed around the 1350s of material in subsoil underfoot: caliche, a concrete-like mix of sand, clay, and calcium carbonate (limestone). Caliche mud was piled in successive courses to form walls four feet thick at the base, tapering toward the top. Open arrangements of pithouses surrounding central plazas gave way to walled compounds and flat-topped earthen sturctures called platform mounds. The Hohokam culture was in place along the Gila and Salt rivers and their tributaries and water was divereted from the rivers through vast irrigation canals. The Hohokam were called ``First Masters of the American Desert``.