March 26, 2023 – The Salado culture occupied the Salt River Canyon country from 1250 to 1450 CE. It was sandwiched between the Hohokam on the lower Salt River and the Mogollon on the upper Salt and Gila Rivers. Accordingly, it traded with and borrowed from those cultures, yet developed its own distinct way of life. Much of the Salado cultural antiquities were lost when they were covered with the lakes formed by the Salt River dams, but a few still exist today. It was our plan to visit two of these remaining sites: Besh-Ba-Gowah and Tonto National Monument.
We began our exploration at Besh-Ba-Gowah Archaeological Park in Globe, Arizona. The park contains the ruins of a Salado pueblo on the banks of Pinal Creek, a major tributary of the Salt River, which was occupied between 1225 and 1400 CE. The site was first excavated during the Great Depression with financing from the Works Progress Administration, and today it contains several reconstructed buildings alongside the remnants of many others. The buildings were of masonry construction: brick walls held together by mortar and then covered with a mud plaster. The walls do not have mud plaster on them today to demonstrate the underlying brick construction. The dwellings were entered via a hatch in the roof, which required ladders to ascend and descend. It is probable this unique architecture was designed to provide security against attacks. The people of Besh-Ba-Gowah grew beans, squash, and cotton, which they irrigated with canals from Pinal Creek.
Next, we traveled to Tonto National Monument, a very different site than Besh-Ba-Gowah, established around 1300 CE. Unlike Besh-Ba-Gowah, the villages at Tonto National Monument are not on the banks of a creek but instead are several hundred feet up the canyon walls in caves. We visited the lower cliff dwellings, which are 300 feet off the canyon floor in a large, natural cave. They face east as these types of dwellings typically do. The buildings were of masonry construction: bricks stacked and mortared together and then covered with a mud plaster – much like Besh-Ba-Gowah. The inhabitants of the cliff dwelling would have been able to see the Salt River from their pueblo; today you can see Roosevelt Lake. The ruins themselves are a marvel. It is hard to imagine the people who inhabited the cliffs at Tonto National Monument carrying the bricks and mud up the steep canyon hillside through the cacti to construct the village. So, there must have been a good reason to place the dwellings in such a difficult spot, likely to defend the village inhabitants against attack.
Like their contemporaries the Hohokam, the people of the Salado culture constructed sturdy pueblos and canals yet disappeared around 1450 CE when their civilization collapsed. They, too, were likely casualties of natural desert processes. In the end, despite all their engineering and construction prowess, the Salado could not overcome the cycles of drought and flooding present on the Salt River.