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| Exploring East Side of Cherry Creek, AZ | |
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| | Exploring East Side of Cherry Creek, AZ | | | |
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Exploring East Side of Cherry Creek, AZ
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| Hiking | 7.00 Miles |
1,300 AEG |
| | Hiking | 7.00 Miles | | | |
| 1,300 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | This triplog covers two days of car camping and hiking on the east side of Cherry Creek Canyon in the Sierra Ancha Mountains. There were several Indian ruins of interest in the area and I wanted to take a look at an old homestead rock cabin. The driving route took me up the power line road which exits FR203, Cherry Creek Road, about a half mile north Pottery Pt. This road is in fairly good shape and follows portions of the old FR202. Arriving near my first ruin destination late Sunday afternoon, I set up camp on a ridge line with a view of Sombrero Peak to the east. The next morning after enjoying a beautiful sunrise I set out on foot to look for two ruins. The first is a small cliff dwelling, V:1:188, Quail Spring Pasture CD, and the second is a 6 room compound, V:1:192, Bronco Canyon Fortress, also called Bronco Canyon Castle.
Great views of the west side of Cherry Creek Canyon opened up as I hiked west along a ridge top. I traversed around the side of a hill below a row of cliffs which I thought were the location of the cliff dwelling. No luck but after checking the elevation I realized that the cliff dwelling had to be lower so I headed down hill to soon discover another row of cliffs. I lucked out and found a way to descend to the bottom of the cliffs and was soon staring at a cliff dwelling wall spanning the width of a small alcove in the cliff face. The ruins matched the description and site diagrams for V:1:188 given by Lange in "Echoes in the Canyons:..". There were four rooms with no remaining roof structure but some of the walls were fairly intact with plaster on the inside surfaces.
After checking out the cliff dwelling I headed for V:1:192. My route led me across a hilltop which looked down on the ruin on the ridge above Bronco Canyon. Brush wasn't much of an issue here compared to off trail hiking on the west side of Cherry Creek Canyon. As I approached the ruin a loud buzzing noise in front of me caught my attention and I jumped back 5 feet. A Black Tailed rattlesnake was hiding under the leaves of an agave like plant (I don't know the plant name). Thanking the snake for letting me know his presence, I detoured around him. The ruin is unique for a surface pueblo in the SA because many of the walls still stand tall. The views from this site are amazing. Using the telephoto lens on my camera I could see several well known cliff dwellings on the west side including Devil's Chasm, lower Cold Spring Canyon, Pueblo Canyon and other lesser known sites I won't mention.
On the way back to my campsite I saw several large cairns of the type used to mark mining claims. Poking around in one of them I found a claim document in a Prince Albert's tobacco can. The claim was dated 1976 and the name of the claim was Spanish Castle #15 - perhaps the name was derived from the nearby Bronco Canyon Castle ruins. It was signed by Walter Cline and Francis Cline Jr. There was no sign of any prospects or mining activity.
That afternoon I packed up the FJ and headed up the road towards the site of an old homestead cabin ruin that has been visited by several other HAZ members. The last 3 miles was on a very rocky tire chewing 4x4 road. The cabin is an interesting structure. The walls are very thick and all made with local rock, some so large that it must have taken at least two men to lift them into place. Adobe mortar was used between the rocks with the method of construction similar to that of the ancient Indian dwellings in the area. A lot of effort went into building the cabin walls but there was no sign of any roof remains. Perhaps the cabin was never finished. Visitors had inscribed their names/initials and date on the wooden frames of the door and windows. The earliest date I could find was 1927. A working windmill is also at this site with an old rock walled tank holding water.
I had planned to camp at the cabin site but there was a steady stream of cattle coming for the water and the area smelled of fresh cow dung. So I drove back out to the main road and camped near an ancient rail corral. The next day I drove to the site of the largest pueblo ruin in the Cherry Creek valley, V:1:26, Granite Basin Pueblo. This site had as many as 200 ruins and was probably among the latest occupied sites in the area. Some brush pruning was required the last couple miles of the drive - I should have just hiked but I was running out of time. The ruin site is large with wall remains everywhere. There were many different types of pottery sherds from red plain ware to decorated bright red. This site was in a natural travel corridor between sites to the east and Cherry Creek Canyon so perhaps trading contributed to the variety of pottery. My last stop before heading for home was Pottery Point on the east side of FR203. This is the site of V:1:166, Pottery Pt Pueblo which is supposed to have at least 23 rooms. I could only find the remains of a couple of rooms so maybe I had the wrong location or maybe the ruins were destroyed by hillside erosion. |
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