The wall around this village originally stood 7 to 11 feet high. There were no doorways in it. This wall and building of this village are of caliche, a limy subsoil found 2 to 5 feet below the surface of this region. To get in or out of the village the Indians used ladders to climb over the wall. The foundations, all that remain of the wall, are covered with wire reinforced, tinted-cement stucco to protect them. Stepping or sitting on the walls may damage them. Help us to protect the walls.
This room is one of approximately 60 rooms inside the compound wall. Walls and floors were made of caliche, and ceilings were layers of poles, saguaro ribs, and reeds capped with a covering of caliche. Some rooms, like this one, had doorways; other rooms had hatchways in the roof centers. A small clay fire pit, about 1 foot in diameter, was in the center of each room. During hot weather, cooking was done out of doors. (_See_ next page).
The Casa Grande was first seen by a European on November 27, 1694, when Father Kino, a Jesuit missionary and explorer, visited the area. He called the building the Casa Grande, or Big House, because it was the biggest structure he had seen in southern Arizona.
The large steel canopy was erected in 1932 to protect the Casa Grande from rain. This building has not been restored, but to keep it from crumbling further, the ruin was stabilized in 1891. The undercut base of the ruin was filled with bricks and cement, two-by-fours were placed over the doorways, and two steel rods were inserted to brace the south wall.
[Illustration: _The Casa Grande, Northeast Corner_]
The wood over the doorway is not original. There is no original wood remaining in the Casa Grande. Father Kino reported it as burned out prior to his 1694 visit.
Though four stories high, only the upper three stories of the Casa Grande were used. The five ground-story rooms were filled with earth to form a platform foundation, and a ladder was used to gain access to the second story through the doorway seen here.
To the right of the doorway and about shoulder high are a line of holes in the wall. These show where a roof, probably for shade, was socketed into the wall.
Notice the series of horizontal cracks along the west wall of the Casa Grande. The cracks show that the walls were built with layers of caliche mud. Each layer was about 26 inches thick. Bricks were not used. The Indians did not make adobe bricks until taught by the Spanish priests centuries later.