Verdugo Stage Stop and Casa Grande

Today we just took off on a couple of little adventures around Casa Grande.  The first was the old Verdugo stage stop and school.  This was out on old dirt roads, similar to what we drove on around Aztec NM when out looking for arches, only these were on flat ground, instead of hilly and barely hanging off the side of a Mesa.

This is a cool old building.  It has had a new roof and roof trusses added in 2004.

I was fascinated to read that it had been used partly as a bunkhouse as recently as the 1980's.

The old mesquite corral, still sometimes used today.

The schoolhouse.

A new roof was put on this in 2005

Next we headed off to Casa Grande, the largest known structure of the ancestral people of the Sonoran Desert.  At first I thought maybe we should just skip this... I mean, we've visited a LOT of ruins since heading west.  I'm so glad we went, though.  Where the ones we saw in New Mexico were built of rock or built into the side of a Mesa, this was an Adobe structure made of caliche, a mix of sand, clay, and limestone.  The upper floors and ceilings/roofs were made from various sizes of juniper, pine, and fir trees.

A large pavilion-type roof was built over the largest structure in the early 1900's to preserve it.  All over the walls, you can see names and other words scratched into the walls.  These are not recent, but were done as travelers came upon the structure as they were heading west, more than a hundred years ago.

Look how big (and perfect!!) this is!

A family of great horned owls live up in the roof structure built over the Great House.

Pretty cactus blossom!

Visitors Center

Out in this area are more ruins from this community.  They are covered with desert sand.  Specialized equipment has been able to map out the layout, but archeologists are keeping it covered, and sometimes add more dirt and sand on it, to keep it preserved.

I'm kind of conflicted on this.  I understand wanting to preserve it, but that's a bit like buying an expensive piece of art, and then keeping it in a safe so nothing happens to it.  No one can enjoy either if they're kept hidden away.

We saw a perfect seguaro cactus today!

You can see the mountains behind it.  This area is really interesting... Flat, flat, flat...

But not far off, to the east, west, and south...

Mountains spring up!

It is also hot Hot HOT.  Upper 90's.  We went from needing throw blankets in the mornings at Aztec, to wanting to just cool off in the pool all the time here!

Moving farther south tomorrow.  We'll see what we get there!