Casa Grande Ruins
Casa Grande Ruins National Monument perserves the remains of an ancient Hohokam farming village.
Early Spanish explorers called this structure Casa Grande. The "Big House" was made of caliche (cuh-LEE-chee), a concrete-like mixture of sand, clay, and limestone. It took 3,000 tons to build the Big House, whose walls were four feet thick at the base.
Sixty feet long, this four story high 'apartment' house was completed prior to 1350. It functioned as an accurate astronomical observatory, storehouse for grains and foodstuffs, a lookout post, and living quarters. It was part of a larger city of dwellings that surrounded it.
Its walls face 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. These ancient people also had irrigration canals from the Gila River. Yet in the 1400's, Hohokam culture ebbed. In fact, their name comes from the nearby Pima Indians, and means "all gone" or "all used up." What happened to these people is a mystery to this date.
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