PUEBLOS

Salado Sites, Arizona

Around 1200 AD, the Salado, an offshoot of the northern Anasazi, migrated westward from the table lands and mesas of northeastern Arizona and New Mexico, and into the flat deserts of the Hohokam region around the Gila and Salt rivers in central Arizona. For several generations there was a mingling of cultures, Anasazi from the north, Hohokam from the west and Mogollon from the east, propagating dry farming and irrigation techniques, and passing along masonry and adobe construction technologies. The Salado people, named after the Rio Salado, or Salt River, occupied the Tonto Basin and the dry desert Pinal mountains around the towns of Globe and Miami, Arizona from about 1150-1450 AD. They distinguished themselves as merchants and traders, as well as warriors, and especially by means of their fine Gila and Tonto Polychrome ceramics, which was widely traded, and has been found at sites as far away as El Paso, Texas and Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico.

The Salt River rises in the White Mountains of eastern Arizona and plunges into a torturous canyon through the Natanes Plateau, a perennial stream hemmed in by steep, saguaro studded hillsides. Below Salt River Canyon the Tonto Creek joins in from the north, to form a wide valley known as the Tonto Basin. Here the Salt River was backed up by the Roosevelt Dam in 1911, flooding the basin and creating Roosevelt Lake. The land is still wild, rugged hills that form a transition zone between the high mesas to the north and the deserts to the south and west. Stately saguaro and stubby paloverde trees march up the steep slopes, with cottonwoods and sycamores in the river valleys, near the top of the Mogollon Rim pinyon pine and juniper trees begin to appear.

There are a number of sites in the Salado area, easily reached from Phoenix by Highway 60 east about 90 miles. Besh-Ba-Gowah Pueblo, a village of over 300 rooms, is located south of the old town of Globe, in the foothills of the Pinal Mountains. Togetzoge is a single story pueblo of about 120 rooms, halfway between the mining towns of Miami and Superior on Highway 60. The village is perched on a narrow ridge, where Sonoran desert plants give way to pinyon and juniper woodlands, at an elevation of 4470 feet. The name is Apache for place where a yellow creek joins a clear one, there was probably a lot of sulphur in the runoff here. Tonto National Monument is about 5 miles south of Roosevelt Dam on Highway 88, 30 miles northwest of Globe. There are 2 cliff dwellings here, a 20 room Lower Ruin and a 40 room Upper Ruin, both set in rocky alcoves in the cliffs overlooking the Tonto Basin and Roosevelt Lake.

View from the Garden at the Besh-Ba-Gowah Pueblo The Besh-Ba-Gowah Pueblo consisted of over 300 rooms, grouped around a rectangular plaza, that housed around 400 people at it's peak. Like the Hohokam, the Salado often surrounded their villages with heavy defensive walls to create an enclosed compound of buildings. Rooms tended to be larger, because in the colder climate at higher elevations, people tended to spend more time indoors. It has been suggested that the walled compounds of the Salado in the Tonto Basin may have been storage and distribution centers for agricultural and trade goods, with many of the ground floor rooms serving as granaries and storage spaces for raw materials and products like ceramics and cloth. In the foreground on the left are the broad spears of a prickly pear cactus that is common to the area, farther back on the right side are some poplar trees, which are unusual.
View of the Besh-Ba-Gowah Pueblo from the North One of the architectural innovations at Besh-Ba-Gowah is the single central entrance corridor, which channels all traffic from the outer gate, through a long, narrow window-less passage, and into the broad open plaza at the center of the pueblo. While this may have served for defensive purposes, it is undoubtedly a planning device that strictly controls the flow of people, and their access to various parts of the village. There are a number of similar corridors connecting other blocks of rooms within the pueblo, suggesting a high degree of administrative, political and social control over the daily activities of the population, as well as the flow of crafts, crops and trade goods through the manufacturing, storage and distribution spaces in the village.
View of the Upper Ruin at Tonto National Monument Visits to the Upper Ruins at Tonto National Monument are by guided tour only, and have to be pre-arranged at the visitor's center, 1 mile south of Highway 88. The hike to the Upper Ruin is 1.5 miles each way, and it climbs over 600 feet up the steep hillside to a high rocky alcove on the south side of the ridgetop. The nearly parabolic alcove shelters a large 2 story structure with 32 ground floor rooms and at least 8 upper rooms. Floor levels in different spaces varied with the height of the rock ledges, there were few doors and windows, and entry into many of the rooms was by a ladder through a hole in the roof. Rooftops and terraces were enclosed with 2-3 foot high parapets and served as daily living and working areas.
The Lower Ruin at Tonto National Monument in it's Alcove The trail to the Lower Ruin at Tonto National Monument is self-guided, it begins in the lush valley of a small creek, the kitchen garden of reeds and grasses, lined with cottonwood, mesquite and willow trees, and teeming with multi-colored wildflowers. The trail then climbs 350 feet up over half a mile to an alcove facing southwest, and containing a smaller pueblo with 16 ground floor rooms and 4 rooms above. Below the pueblo to the west there are remains of a 12 room annex, which was built up against the base of the cliff. Walls were laid up in broken blocks and boulders, with lots of clay mortar and covered with red clay plaster inside and out. Most of the structures were whitewashed periodically, and some surfaces bear remnants of painted decorations.
The Lower Ruin at Tonto National Monument with Saguaros Tonto National Monument is located about 5 miles south of Roosevelt Dam on Highway 88, about 30 miles northwest of Globe, and 48 miles northeast of Apache Junction. There are two cliff dwellings here, a 20 room Lower Ruin and a 40 room Upper Ruin, set in rocky alcoves high in the cliffs above the Tonto Basin. Both pueblos are sheltered in south-facing cliffs, and the Upper Ruin in particular, has commanding views from the ridgetop, overlooking the fingers of Roosevelt Lake to the northeast and Apache Lake to the northwest. Several of the doorways in the cliff dwellings at Tonto appear to have been constructed initially as rectangular openings, and then modified into a T-shape with small wingwalls in the lower half of the door opening. A characteristic element of Anasazi and Chacoan architecture, the reasons for this modification are not well understood. It has been suggested that it may have served to block off or control the opening, for light, ventilation or security reasons. Given the general rarity of doorways, it may also have had some sort of ceremonial or ritual significance, as of entering from open public plaza, into an inner, more private domain inside the great house.

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