Casa Grande - Big House

The entrance to the "Casa Grande" National Monument and Museum

Impressive, big and very old ruins are waiting to be explored
(read more about in the links below)

View from the side... the person in the left corner gives you an idea how BIG this ruins are

Some smaller ruins on the side

The back side of the ruins
(read the description in the following picture to this photo)

Click in the photo to read it bigger. This photo belongs to the photo above!

View from the ruins out into country side and the hills outside around of Mesa,AZ

This is David's uncle and his lovely wife who took us out to this National Monument side of Coolidge, Arizona

Casa Grande Ruins National Monument,
in Coolidge, Arizona, just northeast of the city of Casa Grande, preserves a group of Hohokam structures.

The national monument consists of the ruins of multiple structures surrounded by a compound wall constructed by the Hohokam, who farmed the Gila Valley in the early 1200s. "Casa Grande" is Spanish for "big house" (Siwan Wa'a Ki: in O'odham); these names refers to the largest structure on the site, which is what remains of a four story structure that may have been abandoned by the mid-1400s. The structure is made of caliche, and has managed to survive the extreme weather conditions for about seven centuries. Graffiti from 19th-century passers-by is scratched into its walls; though this is now illegal. Casa Grande now has a distinctive modern roof covering built in 1932.


Casa Grande or the "Big House,"
as it may have appeared around 1350 C.E. One of the largest prehistoric structures ever built in North America, its purpose remains as much a mystery as the people who built it. Archeologists have discovered evidence of wide-scale irrigation farming and trade which lasted over a thousand years and ended about 1450. Today the ancient ones are remembered as the "Hohokam," an O'odham word meaning "Those Who Are Gone."

Hi my friends,

again... thank you for all the nice and kind comments to my blog!! You always make my day with your friendly words :)

We are still stocked in warm Arizona, we were visiting friends and family and tomorrow we will move on for good - slowly towards East again, back over to New Mexico and then further to East, on I-40 - and of course to see pieces of the old Route 66 again. I'm sure there will be a lot to see and to photograph. I'm excited to see a lot of new "stuff"!! :)

So, stay tuned with me - and see you later!
Susanne and David

Have a nice weekend!

I have photographed this big, wonderful Agave plant in the yard by the "Casa Grande" National Monument, close by Florence,AZ


AGAVE
A genus of plants (order Amaryllidaceae) of which the chief species is the maguey or century plant (A. Americana), wrongly called Aloe. It is from ten to seventy years, according to climate, in attaining maturity, when it produces a gigantic flower stem, sometimes forty feet in height, and perishes. The fermented juice is the pulque of the Mexicans; distilled, it yields mescal. A strong thread and a tough paper are made from the leaves, and the wood has many uses.

Hi my friends,

I wish you all a nice weekend!!

Tomorrow we will be hitting the road again, our relaxing time is over. We've enjoyed our stay here in pretty (and finally warm enough for us) Arizona very much.

Actually we don't like to go away and to leave the warm weather behind us...but life has to go on, right?....LOL... Just now we still don't know where to go, in which direction...In the N and NE it's still cold....right? :))

Thanks for all your wonderful compliments these last days to my postings, stay with me also when we are out there on the road again. I'll try to keep up looking to your blogs also - if I'll have good connections. :)

See ya' later...!
Susanne and David