Casa Grande

After a long battle with the desert this ancient building still commands respect. Four stories high and 60 feet long, it is the largest known structure from Hobokam times. Early Spanish explores called it Casa Grande, and to them it was a mystery, its walls face the four cardinal points of the compass.

Like other southwestern farming people, the Hobokam lived in permanent settlements, made pottery, and traded. They irrigated crops with a system of canals. They traded from the Gulf of California to the Great Plans, Colorado Plateau, and northern Mexico. By the year 300 AD a distinct Hobokam culture was in place along the Gila and Salt rivers. The Casa Grande was completed about 1350. When Father Eusebio Kino and his party of missionaries arrived in 1694 they found only an empty shell of the once-flourishing village.