We left Tucson and headed north towards Phoenix with a planned stop at the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument. This is a small site south of Phoenix where extensive ruins of an Ancestral Sonoran Desert People’s settlement was discovered, complete with a very large structure dubbed Casa Grande, or Big House, because of its size. The site had long been abandoned even when it was found by Spanish Missionaries in 1694, but research over the years has uncovered some of its background. Archeologists believe the area was settled around 300AD, with the Casa Grande completed around 1350. Nobody is sure when the area was abandoned, but archeologists now believe that the Ancestral People may have been too good at creating irrigation from the nearby Gila River, and may have caused the river to run dry, meaning they had to move to where the could find water. Modern day ancestors of the Ancestral People don’t believe they went far - since these modern day people are still in the area - but the population centers were abandoned for more disbursed living. This site was the first national archeological reserve, and became protected under the National Park system in 1892. It takes only an hour or so to wander around the site and see the ruins as they have been preserved since 1892, but this is a significant site nonetheless because of it’s historical value both as an archeological site for the Ancestral Sonoran Desert People, and as a testament to how the National Park system can protect these ancestral relics.
We left the site by mid afternoon, heading for the Tonto National Forest east of Phoenix.