Fortaleza Ruin - Gila Bend
Background and History
Fortaleza – Spanish for “Fort on a Hilltop” – is located along the north bank of the Gila River about forty miles southwest of Phoenix. It is important archeologically because it is one of the few sites in Arizona that is unambiguously defensive in nature. The site was built and occupied by the Hohokam between about 800 AD and 1200 AD, and marks the southwestern edge of the Hohokam territory. A few miles away is the well-known Gatlin ruin, a contemporaneous Hohokam town of as many as 500 people that was an important regional farming and trade center. The Gatlin site is owned by the town of Gila Bend, which is planning on opening it to the public as a cultural and educational park.
The Hohokam culture was centered in modern-day Phoenix. From 1200 to 1300 AD, most of the major cultures in Arizona, including the Salado, Sinagua, Anasazi and Hohokam, disappeared or migrated to new areas. The reasons for this upheaval are still not fully understood, although the event coincides with the beginning of the “Little Ice Age” in Europe and, based on tree ring evidence, a period of severe and prolonged drought throughout Arizona. Sometime during that period Fortaleza was abandoned by the Hohokam, and subsequently resettled by Native migrants from the Tucson area. It is now considered an important spiritual site by the San Lucy District of the Tohono O'odham Nation.
Fortaleza was added to the National Registry of Historic Places in 1969 (Site #69000035). Gatlin was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964.
Description of the Site
Fortaleza is constructed on top of a roughly rectangular slab of basalt that is about 100 meters wide by 200 meters long. The slab starts at ground level at the southwest end, and slopes gently upward towards the northeast, rising to height of about fifty feet above the surrounding terrain. This wedge shape results in steep cliffs on three sides that, though climbable, could easily be defended (Photos 1 and 2). The site consists of a few dozen stone-walled rooms grouped in units of two or three, as well as three large adobe structures that some believe to be intended for ceremonial purposes. There is also a large, breast-high wall that stretches across the site about midway up the slab.
|
|
|
|
|
| Photo 1
Fortaleza, looking north across the Gila River.
| Photo 2
Overview of the site: Note the defensive wall halfway up the slope.
| Photo 3
Construction is very solid, with some walls as much as a meter thick.
| Photo 4
Walls consist of an inner and outer course of carfully laid stonework, with the center filled with rubble and mud. (Backpack included for scale.)
| Photo 5
Buildings below the wall, with entrances facing up the hill.
|
Fortaleza: Click on a thumbnail for larger pictures.
The construction here is very sturdy. Many of the walls are a meter thick or more (Photo 3), constructed by building an inner and outer wall with large, carefully-fitted stones, and filling the middle with debris, smaller rocks, gravel, and mud which hardened into a sort of stabilizing mortar (Photo 4). This is unusually rugged construction for the time period.
The defensive nature of the site is apparent for several reasons. Photo 5 shows several of the buildings located on the lower half of the site, all of which have their doors facing up hill towards the safety of the fall-back position behind the central wall. Photo 6 shows the wall itself, which runs the entire width of the basalt outcrop. Several rooms are built up against the uphill side of the wall, using it as their downhill sides. There are no openings in the wall itself anywhere along its entire length; even small gaps between buildings are carefully walled up (Photo 7).
|
|
|
|
|
| Photo 6
The defensive wall.
| Photo 7
Gaps between buildings are carefully sealed.
| Photos 8, 9 & 10
Multiple defensive emplacements below the lip of the cliff guard a possible access route.
|
Fortaleza: Click on a thumbnail for larger pictures.
The southeast edge of the site has a low cliff, under which is an easily climbed talus slope that would make that side vulnerable to attack (Photo 8). To protect their left flank, the architects constructed several more defensive buildings below the lip of the cliff (Photos 9 and 10). The supposition that these are defensive emplacements rather than conventional habitations is supported by the fact that they are built on ground with a substantial slope. This is virtually never seen with habitations of the period, especially when flat ground is available only a short distance away; the only justification for the poor choice of siting is that they were designed to guard the approaches to the top of the outcrop. While these structures may have been very effective against human enemies, they weren’t invulnerable: Photo 10 shows the damage done to one of the buildings by a giant boulder that broke off from the cliff above.
|
|
|
| Photo 11
Large petroglyph panel just below the site.
| Photo 12
Smaller petroglyph panel.
| Photo 13
Comparison of petroglyphs from Fortaleza (left) and the Agua Fria National Monument (right).
|
Fortaleza: Click on a thumbnail for larger pictures.
In addition to the structures, there are a number of petroglyphs marking the approaches to the site. Photo 11 shows one large panel that some have suggested depicts a chaotic battle, although this is probably just wishful thinking. Another smaller panel is shown in Photo 12. Photo 13 shows an interesting comparison: the lizard-man on the left is at Fortaleza, while the one on the right was photographed at the Agua Fria National Monument almost a hundred miles to the northeast, which roughly marked the northern-most edge of the Hohokam empire at the time.
|
| Photo 1
Panoramic view of the village of Fortaleza, taken from an adjacent hilltop.
|
Fortaleza: Click on thumbnail for larger picture (544 kBytes).
Return to Arizona Ruins HOME
