This morning we moved from the Western Horizon Resort to the Pinal Co. Fairgrounds. This is a very nice fairgrounds and we have stayed here before and will be back in January for the Fiddlers Jam and in February for the Gypsy Journal Rally. We are out in the middle of a large agriculture area, only because they have water available for irrigation.
We drove up to Coolidge to the Casa Grande National Monument. The photo is of the Casa Grande Ruins. After a long battle with the desert, this ancient building still commands respect. Four stories high and 60 feet long, it is the largest structure known to exist in Hohokam times. Early Spanish explorers called it Casa Grande ("great house"), and to them was a mystery. Its walls faced the four cardinal points of the compass. A circular hole in the upper west wall aligns with the setting sun during the summer solstice. Other openings also align with the sun and moon at specific times. Apparently the builders of the Great House, people who knew very well the ways of the land gathered inside to ponder the heavens. Knowing the changing positions of celestial objects meant knowing times for planting, harvest, and celebration.
The Hohokam people lived in the desert and planted crops and watered them with a series of canals moving water from the Gila river. Because much of the cropland lay on natural terraces above the Gila River floodplain, canal heads had to be far enough upstream (east) to establish a downhill flow. Distribution canals branched off at major settlements. These in turn flowed onto a web of smaller channels connected by lateral ditches that opened directly into fields. Strung along the main canals were villages, about one every three miles that united to build and maintain the system. This is believed to have taken place in the onset of the Classic period around 1150 a.d.. The Classic period lasted until the 1400s, when Hohokam culture ebbed throughout the Phoenix Basin. In 1694 Father Eusebio Kino and his party of missionaries found an empty shell of the once-flourishing village. The Pima Indians, who lived in brush huts nearby, said that their ancestors were "ho-ho-KAHM," meanng "all gone" or "all used up" Few European-Americans visited the area until the late 19th century when souvenir hunters threatened to destroy the site. The scientific community pressed for legal protection and in 1892 the Casa Grande became the nation's first archaeological preserve.