BGuthrie Photos: AZ -- Casa Grande Ruins Natl Monument

AZ -- Casa Grande Ruins Natl Monument:

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. CGRAND_170715_022.JPG: Who were these Ancestral Sonoran Desert People? No one alive now knows what name the people who built the Casa Grande called themselves centuries ago. Archeologists today use the term HOHOKAM to label the culture that flourished here from 1,500 years ago to 550 years ago. At archeological sites, like Casa Grande Ruins, you can see similar platform mounds, ball courts, irrigation networks, and homes placed around plazas inside walled compounds. These ancient sites also share adistinctive red-on-buff pottery and carved shell jewelry. Six tribes in today's Southwest still have histories that linkthemselves to the people who once lived here. For these tribes, Casa Grande Ruins is a sacred place.
2. CGRAND_170715_029.JPG: Before Walled Compounds About 4,100 years ago, people in southern Arizona began to grow corn. Over time more and more crops were introduced by trade. People became more settled and lived in the same place for longer periods of time. They built earthen homes called pithouses and began to dig canals to water their fields. Some 1,500 years ago, larger villages began to appear in southern Arizona. Around 800 years ago people here began to build not only pithouses, but aboveground buildings and walled compounds like the ruins you see before you today. Ancient Grains, Ancient Technologies. The corn you see here closely resembles ancient maize grown in the Southwest 1,500 years ago. Baskets made harvesting crops easier. People used stone tools to grind grains. Pottery helped store and protect food and seeds from pests.
3. CGRAND_170715_038.JPG: Desert Farming, Then and Now Farming in this part of Arizona started 4,100 years ago with corn. Little by little, over the centuries, travelers brought in beans, squash, gourds, pumpkins, tobacco, and cotton. People here gradually dug a vast network of canals to take water from the rivers into their fields. Communities living along the miles of ditches worked together to maintain their irrigation system. The first Spaniards who visited the Casa Grande in the late 1600s noticed that people here grew cotton. Cotton thrives in hot climates, but it is a very, very thirsty crop. Without irrigation, cotton won't grow in a desert. Today the farm fields near Casa Grande Ruins are still one of the largest cotton-producing areas in the United States. Irrigation still makes desert farming possible." Long-Range Trade And Travel. Farmers living near the Casa Grande traded cotton and surplus crops for raw materials and other goods. Copper bells and scarlet macaws came up from the south. Turquoise and obsidian came here from the north and east. People in southern Arizona journeyed to the Sea of Cortez and to the Pacific, returning with seashells. They fashioned their shells into beautiful bracelets, rings, and pendants. 220 Miles Of Canals. Near Casa Grande Ruins, the Ancestral Sonoran Desert People irrigated as many as 19,000 acres of crops.
4. CGRAND_170715_046.JPG: Daily Life Within the Walls The open spaces behind you and to your right are called plazas. Here you might have watched food preparations, pottery making, spinning, weaving, basket making, and other chores. In winter, people worked out in the open plazas where the sun could warm them. In summer, they sought shade alongside buildings or worked under breezy ramadas -- open-weave, wood-and-brush overhead shelters. People used the rooms here in the compound for family sleeping quarters, storage, and ceremonies. You could pass into some rooms through doors in the walls. Others you could only enter from a rooftop hatch by climbing ladders. Artisans In The Making. Children as young as six years old helped make articles that the community needed -- like this ceramic scoopused to serve food. While girls here learned to make pottery, spin, and weave, boys worked on stone and wooden tools for farming and weapons for hunting.
5. CGRAND_170715_052.JPG: Engineered to Last Picture the effort and skills needed to build something the size of the Casa Grande without modern power tools, wheels, beasts of burden, or support frames. The Ancestral Sonoran Desert People used caliche, a desert soil rich in calcium carbonate, to raise the thick walls you see here. Caliche was dug and mixed with water in shallow pits to form a stiff concrete-like material. They shaped the mud by hand to form the walls up to the heights you see. Look closely at these walls. Can you see horizontal lines? Those lines show "courses," the height a batch of caliche was piled in one work session before being left to dry. After a course dried out, the workers laid down a fresh batch of caliche mud on top. These builders' ingenuity and knowledge of local soils made it possible to construct a building that has lasted more than seven centuries." Were There Others Like This? Other Great Houses were found along the Gila River and in the Phoenix Basin. Archeologists believe another structure like the Casa Grande existed at the site of Pueblo Grande, an archeological park in Phoenix. Today, the Casa Grande remains the only example of a multistory structure from the Hohokam culture.
6. CGRAND_170715_078.JPG: D. Henness 8-13-1900
7. CGRAND_170715_104.JPG: There were a pair of owls in the rafters
8. CGRAND_170715_120.JPG: Why Build the Casa Grande? Archeologists don't know for sure. Its original purpose remains a puzzle. Here, there are still more questions than answers. Was it an ancient astronomical observatory? Perhaps. Why do the walls line up north-south-east-west? Unknown. We can still observe the sun and moon line up with certain holes in the wall before you, year in and year out. Were sacred ceremonies held here? Did a leader who oversaw the all-important irrigation canals work inside these rooms? Did an influential family or clan call the Casa Grande their home? The answers remain unknown. The Casa Grande likely served many purposes, many functions. Why do you think the Ancestral Sonoran Desert People built this impressive multistory building? Farming societies in many parts of the ancient world worked out ways to track the seasons. The Casa Grande also has features that can be used to accurately mark the time of year.
9. CGRAND_170715_143.JPG: J. W. Ward Sergy. 1st cavalry 1871
10. CGRAND_170715_148.JPG: Fred English 1891
11. CGRAND_170715_150.JPG: C.E. Fimcye 1879
12. CGRAND_170715_161.JPG: Harvesting a Bountiful Desert For centuries, people have harvested plants for food, for medicine, and to make useful items for everyday living. Despite temperatures that can climb to 120� F, there is a diversity of plant species to be found in the Sonoran Desert. Many plants here have adapted to receiving only nine inches of rainfall a year. The rains peak twice: once in winter, and again in late summer. Today Native Americans follow traditions of collecting desert resources passed down for centuries. Women still gather desert willow shoots, cattail, devils claw, yucca, and bear grass to make baskets.
13. CGRAND_170715_175.JPG: Irrigation Communities The walled compound where you are standing was just one community of a network of communities that were built along canal systems. An eagle flying high over this Gila River Valley 1,000 years ago would have seen dozens of villages with wide, irrigated fields. Extended families usually shared rooms and open areas within a compound like the one you are in now. Several compounds grouped together made up a village. Villages along a network of canals worked together to keep the irrigation water flowing into the fields. The largest villages were often found at the beginning or end of canals. At these sites you will find ball courts, and platform mounds and sometimes structures like the Casa Grande. Large sites like Casa Grande Ruins were gathering places where people celebrated ceremonies and harvests.
14. CGRAND_170715_188.JPG: Not Just Survival -- A Place for the Arts Imagine you were wandering this plaza 700 years ago. You would smell wood smoke, and hear dogs barking and children laughing. Beyond the 7-foot-tall outer compound wall, green, well-watered fields of corn, beans, squash, and cotton stretched along the canals for miles. On any typical day, someone here would be grinding corn. Others might be making pots, weaving, or spinning cotton. Artisans carved shell jewelry or fashioned pendants out of rare stones such as turquoise and argillite. Other craftsmen made arrowheads, stone axes, and farm tools. Casa Grande's wealth and security rested on the food and cotton coming from lush fields. These farmers had to devote considerable time, day after day, to tending their fields and canals. Artifacts found at Casa Grande Ruins reveal that the people who once lived here were highly skilled artisans.
15. CGRAND_170715_204.JPG: Disrespected, Then Protected In the 1700s and early 1800s, only a trickle of travelers came by the Casa Grande. First Spanish explorers, and then Mexican and American travelers wondered who built this ruin and why. More people visited after 1879 when the railroad first reached the town of Casa Grande 19 miles away. Travelers scratched their names into the walls. Some took away artifacts, even pieces of the walls, as souvenirs. In 1889 Congress voted to protect Casa Grande Ruins from further vandalism and looting. They voted to pay for clearing away debris and repairing the eroded foundations. The wooden beams and metal rods you see today were installed in 1891 to brace up some of the walls. Three years later, the federal government made Casa Grande the nation's first archeological preserve. Who named the Casa Grande? A Jesuit missionary, explorer, and mapmaker, Eusebio Francisco Kino (1645–1711), was the first European to see and document these ruins -- in 1694. Father Kino called the building 'Casa Grande,' Spanish for 'great house.'
16. CGRAND_170715_231.JPG: Owl #1
17. CGRAND_170715_243.JPG: Owl #2
18. CGRAND_170715_262.JPG: A Legendary Sacred Place The remnants of monumental buildings and large walled compounds you see here have been slowly going back to the desert for more than 560 years. The people who used to live here left suddenly. Many of their descendants still live in the Sonoran Desert today. Others moved to northern Arizona and western New Mexico. Our visitor center film, Casa Grande: House of Many Stories, explains the deep meaning of this place to the descendants of the Ancestral Sonoran Desert People. They regard this place as sacred. "Siwan Wa'a Ki is a place … to pray or sing songs to the Huhugam Spirits. The non-O'odham call this sacred place Casa Grande Ruin… (it) is well known to all people and mentioned in O'Odham legends." Danny Lopez, Tohono O'odham elder
19. CGRAND_170715_276.JPG: I couldn't make out the removed lines. Something like "free route service 8:00am to 5:00pm"
20. CGRAND_170715_296.JPG: The Anza Expedition and Case Grande Ruins
21. CGRAND_170715_299.JPG: Roundtail Ground Squirrels
22. CGRAND_170715_302.JPG: Ball Games, Platform Mounds, and Great Houses Does the hollow, oval mound you see before you remind you of a sports stadium? Just like today's arenas, this ball court was a place where crowds of people regularly gathered more than 1,000 years ago. Every society needs public places to get together. Here the ball court, platform mounds, and the Casa Grande all served as community centers for the Ancestral Sonoran Desert People -- but at different times. Archeologists see clues that once the platform mounds to your right were built, people suddenly abandoned this ball court. Then when the Casa Grande was built, around 100–150 years after the platform mounds, it became the center of the community. The Old Ball Game. Players used stone balls larger than today's professional baseballs. Archeologists have identified about 200 ball courts like this in Arizona. A fine caliche plaster made the central playing fields hard and smooth.
23. CGRAND_170715_311.JPG: Earthen Platform Mounds Look at the mounds of dirt 100 yards ahead. They are manmade. Picture them 900 years ago, covered with buildings and plazas and people, all inside a rectangular 7-foot-tall wall. Imagine the work it would take to make such a 10-foot-tall base platform by hand, then build a complex like you see in this illustration atop it. Archeologists have found about 50 platform mounds like these here in southern Arizona. The mounds you see are about five feet taller today than they would have been centuries ago. National Park Service archeologists have covered these platforms with backfill to preserve and protect them. Backfilling involves reburying ruins with soil. This preservation method cannot stop deterioration, but it can slow down erosion and stabilize the site.
24. CGRAND_170715_325.JPG: The Anza Expedition
25. CGRAND_170715_331.JPG: To Dig –Or Not to Dig. 296 words. Did you know that digging any ancient site is destructive? Once archeologists excavate a site, its value for further investigations decreases. Both the mound in front of you and the compound where you saw the Casa Grande have been excavated. Nowadays archeologists use less invasive ways to explore. Ground-penetrating radar can show us walls still hidden underground -- without digging. High-definition laser scans minutely measure structures. Laser scans can reveal what has been lost to erosion over the years. Throughout the National Park Service these days, archeologists strive to use nondestructive technologies. Here at Casa Grande Ruins you can see preservation archeology practiced. Walls are regularly coated with a mud mixture to protect them from damage from the wind and rain. Jesse Walter Fewkes first excavated here in 1906–1908. Fewkes wanted to make Casa Grande Ruins into "the first Exhibition Ruin." This was then a completely new idea: preserve an archeological site and use it to educate visitors.
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Wikipedia Description: Casa Grande Ruins National Monument
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, in Coolidge, Arizona, just northeast of the city of Casa Grande, preserves a group of Ancient Pueblo Peoples Hohokam structures of the Pueblo III and Pueblo IV Eras.

Ancient pueblos

The national monument consists of the ruins of multiple structures surrounded by a compound wall constructed by the ancient people of the Hohokam period, who farmed the Gila Valley in the early 13th century. "Archeologists have discovered evidence that the ancient Sonoran Desert people who built the Casa Grande also developed wide-scale irrigation farming and extensive trade connections which lasted over a thousand years until about 1450 C.E."

"Casa Grande" is Italian and Spanish for "big house" (Siwa� Wa'a Ki: in O'odham); these names refer to the largest structure on the site, which is what remains of a four story structure that may have been abandoned by 1450. The structure is made of caliche, and has managed to survive the extreme weather conditions for about seven centuries. The large house consists of outer rooms surrounding an inner structure. The outer rooms are all three stories high, while the inner structure is four stories high. The structures were constructed using traditional adobe processes. The wet adobe is thicker at the base and adds significant strength. Horizontal cracks can be noticed and this defines the breaks between courses on the thick outer walls. The process consisted of using damp adobe to form the walls and then waiting for it to dry, and then building it up with more adobe. Casa Grande contained a ball court much like that found at Pueblo Grande de Nevada. Father Eusebio Kino was the first European to view the Hohokam complex in November 1694 and named it Casa Grande. Graffiti from 19th-century passers-by is scratched into its walls; though this is now illegal. Casa Grande now has a distinctive modern roof covering built in 1932.

Administrative history

In 1891, the monument underwent repairs supervised by Cosmos Mindeleff of the Bureau of American Ethnology, until funds ran out. Proclaimed Casa Grande Reservation by an order of President Benjamin Harrison on June 22, 1892, Casa Grande Ruins became the first prehistoric and cultural reserve in the US. It was then re-designated a national monument by President Woodrow Wilson on August 3, 1918. As with all historical areas administered by the National Park Service, Casa Grande was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966.

Historic adobes

Between 1937 and 1940 the Civilian Conservation Corps built several adobe buildings to serve as housing and administrative offices for the National Monument. The adobe buildings, constructed using traditional methods, continue in use today and are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Because of careful conservation, the physical appearance of Casa Grande Ruins has hardly changed since the 1940s.

Olmsted shelter

In 1932, a ramada was built to shelter the ruins from weathering by Boston architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. In the early 21st century, a pair of Great horned owls took up residence in the rafters of the Olmsted shelter.

The current protective structure covering the "Great House" replaced a wooden similar structure built to protect it in 1932. Due to the fragile nature of the "Great House", visitors to the site are not permitted inside. Observation is permitted outside the structure only for visitors to protect its integrity.
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