![]() The Akimel O’odham and Tohono O’odham people who live nearby consider them their ancestors, as do the Hopi and Zuni hundreds of miles to the northeast.Īs I avoid sunburns beneath the protective New Deal-era roof, I can still see evidence from these ancestral people today. Their agricultural civilization, often called the Hohokam, had its basis in the largest system of irrigation canals in North America and it endured between 11 CE.Īlthough the Hohokam civilization fell apart-whether due to droughts or floods or internal uprisings-the indigenous people who built Casa Grande are still with us today. ![]() This Casa Grande, or “Big House” in Spanish, was built by the ancestral Sonoran Desert people. The ruins of Casa Grande represent the central compound of what was once a major farming village south of the Gila River. A huge structure dominates this clearing: a crumbling earthen tower capped with a modern metal roof. All this continues until the fields give way to the natural creosote flats of the Sonoran Desert. Lonely farmhouses are surrounded by Italian cypress, Australian eucalyptus, or shaggy California fan palms, themselves forming another kind of moat around homes. Water from aquifers, from the Gila River, or carried uphill across the state from Lake Mead fills concrete-lined irrigation canals, forming a moat between the blacktop and bright green fields. ![]() The miles pass by as I switch from one state highway to the next. It’s not long before I exit the sprawl and enter into the vast irrigated fields of Pinal County, Arizona. Heading south out of Phoenix, I pass through exurbs of stucco houses, strip malls, and one chain restaurant after another. on a Saturday in June and it’s already 100º F as I drive down a highway that’s 14 lanes at its widest point.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |