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| Hiking | 7.01 Miles |
882 AEG |
| | Hiking | 7.01 Miles | 4 Hrs 40 Mns | | 2.21 mph |
| 882 ft AEG | 1 Hour 30 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | The Gila River supported an ancient population and there are extensive cultural remnants along it's length. Currently there is a major effort underway to have a long section designated as a national monument. archaeologysouthwes ... end/ (scroll to bottom to see a map).
There are quite a few triplogs posted on HAZ showing nice petroglyphs along the Gila, usually unspecified locations (as is the norm for petroglyph people), but I hadn't looked around there myself. I picked a likely looking spot to start with and I don't use it's name here because, surprisingly, you won't find it "culturally-connected" in a Google search. The location is on the NE end of the proposed national monument.
It's easy to get to the start, just a few miles off Rt.85 west of Buckeye, and I walked through the "wildlife area" on my way to the butte. It's a maze of (closed) roads but not hard to navigate; you actually exit the wildlife area before reaching the butte. I didn't notice any trail up the hill so just started up. It didn't take long to start noticing some petroglyphs on the basalt boulders. Probably different trajectories will find more petroglyphs.
The view from the top is very nice with the Gila River directly below and stretching off in both directions. There is also a concentration of glyphs on top as well as habitation signs (pottery pieces, clearings, and rock piles). I more or less expected this but I didn't expect the extensive "trincheras" ruins down the northwest side of the butte.
It was a lot of fun traversing down the NW side walking along the obviously man-made terraces consisting of cleared area, with rock outlines, and plenty of petroglyphs and even some mortars in between. There is a well-known trincheras site in Ironwood Forest National Monument but I think this one impressed me more...maybe because it was unexpected.
I continued along visiting some other high points to the west. There was some use trails along these and it's pretty nice desert but I didn't find any more cultural signs...but the one site was excellent.
Wildlife: briefly saw a fox; saw two roadrunners; came around a corner and was two feet from a large beehive  . |
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