Casa Grande Ruins Trail
The Casa Grande Trail is about 400 yards long and an easy walk. Numbered stakes along the trail are set at points of interest, and corresponding numbered paragraphs in this booklet explain the features.
You may enter the Casa Grande (Big House) only on a ranger-conducted guided tour.
1.
From about 2,000 years ago until about A.D. 1450, people living in this area developed and expanded a stone-age civilization that the archeologists call the Hohokam (Ho-Ho-Kahm) culture. Hohokam means “those who have gone” in the language of the nearby Pima Indians, who are probably descendants of these prehistoric people.
The Hohokam lived in this region for many centuries before building walled villages like this between A.D. 1300 and 1450. Primarily farmers, raising corn, beans, squash, and cotton, they developed extensive irrigation canal systems that took water from the Gila (Hee-la) River. About A.D. 1450, this village and others like it were abandoned. We do not know why. When the Spaniards explored this area, they found Pimas, living in open villages and irrigating their farmlands, several miles to the west.
2. Village Wall.
The wall around this village originally stood 7 to 11 feet high. There were no doorways in it. This wall and building of this village are of caliche, a limy subsoil found 2 to 5 feet below the surface of this region. To get in or out of the village the Indians used ladders to climb over the wall. The foundations, all that remain of the wall, are covered with wire reinforced, tinted-cement stucco to protect them. Stepping or sitting on the walls may damage them. Help us to protect the walls.
3. Living Room.
This room is one of approximately 60 rooms inside the compound wall. Walls and floors were made of caliche, and ceilings were layers of poles, saguaro ribs, and reeds capped with a covering of caliche. Some rooms, like this one, had doorways; other rooms had hatchways in the roof centers. A small clay fire pit, about 1 foot in diameter, was in the center of each room. During hot weather, cooking was done out of doors. (See [next page]).