HikeArizona.COM

When I see "Ruins" on the Mytopos I assume that there Indian ruins at that site. It was this assumption that got me interested in the area immediately north of the CCRP, beyond the Go-John Trail. Satellite views looked promising too. It's State Trust land so I got a permit and yesterday finally made the trek over there. First and foremost, despite plenty of places target shoot this site is littered with shotgun and bullet casings as well as shot up debris(Makes me wonder what the permit is really protecting). Second I am not absolutely sure that these are "Indian Ruins".

Here are some of my personal notes:
Ruins were trashed. Creek (Dry with standing water - rained two weeks prior) ran just behind. Weird PVC seemed to be running under the road but PVC was wrecked too. There seemed to be one long rock wall (30') structure running to the east and perhaps up to 4 room structures existed.
Everything was 2.5' tall. One room was either raised or roof collapse into it. Others seemed to have floors at ground level. One small 6' square room seemed to have been repurposed as the base to build a round reinforced cement structure with very thin walls, not sure if it was water tank or what. Some old fencing and posts remained, along with a metal water tank that could be associated with the previous cement structure. The metal tank as well as any thing else metal was pretty well shot up, used for target practice. Shotgun shells littered the area. Another metal post was cemented into the ground. Suspect that if these are Indian ruins the area was repurposed to coral cattle at some point in recent past. I didn't any other signs of modern buildings.

I had been hesitant about revealing too much about the location of this site, but it would seem the cat's out of the bag here. I feel like a little more is necessary to protect this site. I am not sure why CCRP doesn't annex the site. A noteworthy thing about this site is that I am not sure that it is itself on State Trust land which looks like it horseshoes around limiting access by limiting access to the road that goes near it.

Sadly it seems since it's been repurposed in historic times and now destroyed by vandals, that it may be a lost cause.
We explored a site S.E. of Sears Kay Sunday. I first found it 36 years ago and suprisingly little has changed since then.

I like to keep locations pretty secret for ruins that aren't trashed yet. We hit some in the Sierra Ancha a while back that were super seldom visited and when we posted our HAZ triplogs and pictures we made sure not to give any location clues and did not include any pictures that showed the surrounding area. If another HAZ member that you trust asks for info, I can see letting them in on it-- but I would hate to see irresponsible trollers looking for artifacts finding this ruin because I freely gave out the info. Anything that's already on maps, I wouldn't worry about it since they no doubt get plenty of visitors.

We also found some this past spring that are seldom visited but were able to figure out the exact location from other HAZ members' info even though they were trying to be really secretive. If someone wants to see these places, they can put in the work to find them.

The site we went to had a couple of dozen small dams, more than I've ever seen at one place.
I was going to shoot pics for here as well as it's relation to Sears Kay......well I left the camera in the pack.

Tough_Boots wrote:I like to keep locations pretty secret for ruins that aren't trashed yet.

I was of a mind to do that and the pictures I did take wouldn't have given anything away but the area appears to be well known to those who choose to abuse, plenty of bicycles through the area (No emails please, I am not accusing the bicyclist of anything).

Alston Neal wrote:Sadly it seems since it's been repurposed in historic times and now destroyed by vandals

I get that but it seems to me that this place must have some cool stories to be told, or perhaps be made as an example. It's so close to Spur Cross or CCRP seems like a no-brainer.

The combination of two cultures coming together at a site can be interesting.
In the Anchas theres an old ranch not too far from a site and one of the rooms was restored.
I'm sure it was by the rancher, for what purpose I don't know but kind of cool.