CASA GRANDE RUINS The History of Casa Grande Ruins National Monument

¹In 1960 the annual visitor count was up to 76,924.

²Estimates on miles of canals built range from 135 to 300, on population from 50,000 to 300,000.

³Bancroft wrote that Padre Keller visited the Casa Grande in 1736, but his diary was not extant, nor was Sedelmair's. Recent translations of Sedelmair's writings show that his description of Casa Grande was almost a paraphrase of that of Manje; Sedelmair very possibly visited the ruin about 1744, but left no original observations on it. Similarly, the description in the Rudo Ensayo of 1762 seems to have drawn heavily on earlier sources.

⁴The passage in question is ". . . de manera que estan las paredes encaladas y lisas con un barro algo colorado . . ."

⁵This portion of the Font journal shows that he said his daily Mass in camp, before visiting the Casa Grande. It was Fewkes (1913: 91) who named the standing wall east of the Casa Grande as part of "Font's Room", in honor of the ruin mapping done by the Padre; the idea that Font said Mass at Casa Grande, or in Font's Room, seems to have no foundation in primary sources. Fewkes speculates that Font's Room may have been the one used when Father Kino celebrated Mass at the Casa Grande in 1697.

⁶On February 20, 1893 General Land Office Assistant Commissioner W. W. Rose wrote to the Secretary of the Interior that the reserve of Casa Grande had been placed under the control of the Bureau of Ethnology and he suggested that the Custodian send his monthly reports to that Bureau (National Archives, Tray 166C, Item No. 401). Carbon copies of reports as late as 1918 (NPS; Casa Grande National Monument Administration) are on the General Land Office form for "abandoned military reservation"—this may have been only an economical use of outmoded forms for the area file copy.

⁷This request was later formalized; when Mr. Cammerer transmitted Pinkley's next appointment paper in July 1919, he wrote "your designation as Custodian of Tumacacori National Monument is continued in force under this appointment."

⁸Unfortunately, this "typical Desert" valley scene did not last much past Mr. Pinkley's lifetime: the mesquite trees, whose deep tap roots could no longer reach the fast-sinking water table, died in the 1940's.

⁹This almost obscured another event of importance, the establishment of a Post Office at Coolidge, Arizona, where the Southern Pacific RR now delivered the mail within one and one-half miles of the National Monument.

¹⁰In 1961, three city wells are pumping from the 320, 350, and 320 foot levels; one well has been drilled to a depth of 1100 feet.

¹¹In 1959-60 an analysis of the available materials and information recovered from these excavations was made by J. R. Ambler (Ambler 1961: 52-165).