Taking a break from the better part of a month un-packing boxes, Candy and I
went to visit the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument in June, 2003.
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The Casa Grande
Ruins are located in Coolidge, AZ. The map is a little
misleading because there's a town of Casa Grande about 10-15 miles west of
Coolidge on I-10 between Phoenix and Tucson. Coolidge is about an hour
drive north of Tucson.
The ruins are very much in the Sonora Desert. It's becoming more and
more a desert with every passing year. When they started measuring the
depth of the ground water from the surface in the 1930's, the ground water
was only about 12 feet below the surface. It is currently over 100 feet
below the surface and dropping. Lets see, that's about 90 years and about
90 feet difference. That suggests the ground water is dropping at a rate
of about 10 feet a year and, presumably, that rate is accelerating with
the local population growth. |
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Quoting From Ancient Ruins of the South West:
An Archeological Guide by David Grant
Noble; Northland Publishing, (c) 2000:
"Casa Grande is a massive pueblo-style building on an open plane
that has withstood the effects of weather and vandalism for six centuries.
Its very existence today as more than just a dirt mound in the desert
testifies to the strength of this "big house" and the immense
construction investment of its builders.
"The Hohokam Indians, who built this three story mansion in the
1300s, designed it as a perfect 3:4 rectangle oriented to the cardinal
directions. Deeply entrenched in the ground, its walls are more than four
feet thick at their base, tapered to two feet at full height. |
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"The building material was caliche-adobe mud, which was
mixed to a thick consistency in pits in the ground, carried to the
wall, and paddled by hand in courses about two feet high. Evidence of
these courses is still visible in the wall cracking. The caliche, a desert
sub-soil with high lime content, became brick hard when it dried, which
accounts for the preservation of these ruins."
Though the Hohokam, Anasazi, Sinagua and other desert groups are
generally considered historically to be very peaceful, agrarian peoples, I've been
reading a number of articles recently that are re-evaluating the importance of
warfare among these Pre-Columbian tribes. As we wandered the site, I was
struck by the visible similarities between this ruin and those of Medieval
castles in Europe. |
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The main structure at Casa Grande sits in the middle of a
walled area that includes a number of other buildings. Though three
stories tall, the lowest floor was originally elevated above ground level
about 5-6 feet. There are only two points of entry to the main building,
both must be entered by a ladder which may be withdrawn from above and
could function much the same way a draw bridge did. The walls of the
building are smooth and, with the exception of two small windows on each
face, featureless. It would be impossible to climb the walls without
ladders. In the meantime, the top most floor is recessed, leaving what
could be very effective battlements - high enough to be virtually inaccessible
from outside the structure, with a low, possibly protective
wall around the periphery.
Perhaps I'm only romanticizing what I saw at Casa Grande but I think
there's an inevitable functional comparison that follows closely on the
heels of the visual similarities between this structure and the castles
of yore.
We like to think there are great differences between one culture and
another. However, I suspect the similarities are more numerous and, in the
end, more telling. |
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This photograph shows one of the other structures at the
southwest corner within the walled compound that contains the main
"house". |
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Here is one of the doors in the outlying structure. I'd
estimate that the door is about 3 1/2' tall requiring one duck and tuck to
get through. |