We visited the Casa Grande Ruins in March 2016.
Casa Grande National Monument in Arizona is conveniently located between Phoenix and Tucson. It's a great place to check out for a couple of hours. Ancient Sonoran desert people (sometimes called Hohokam) built it 650 years ago. It had 4 floors and the logs used to build the ceilings were hand carried over 50 miles from the nearest forest, because the people had no pack animals or carts. About 600 logs were needed to build it, so that is an amazing amount of work! The current protective roof was built in 1932, which is surprising since it looks so modern. And it has always had owls living in it. Before there were park rangers to protect these amazing ruins, many people too chunks of the ruin and carved their names into it and you can still see the damage today, which is very sad.
Be sure to have the kids look for the secret room on the site. In the museum/visitor center there's also a great touch table that is very interesting for kids. It had rattlesnake skin, cactus boots (which are actually bird nests from inside a saguaro cactus), antlers, cactus skeleton, and other interesting items. The best part about Casa Grande Ruins is that the badges we earned are made out of wood! Beautiful!
Junior Ranger: "It's big! It's huge! It's large! I've never seen anything like the Casa Grande before!"
Mom: "I never realized how complex of a society the people had back then in this area. They had a society with farmers, artists, and rulers--to be able to build this large 4-story structure with materials brought from so far away. And they figured out what to do with all that caliche they dug up in their fields. That's what they used to make the adobe. It's just like cement and has lasted for 600 years. Geniuses."
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