Casa Malpais

   "House in 
      the Badlands"

  Springerville, Arizona

 Casa Malpais stairs 2007

Discover Springerville’s Casa Malpais Ruin

by Robert Lucas

     SPRINGERVILLE, AZ-Visitors to the White Mountains from across the country and around the world stop at Casa Malpais museum at 418 E. Main
and then join a guided tour of the ancient pueblo ruin on the rim of Round Valley.  But two Arizona families, Tom and Jane Nash from Phoenix and Tom and Rebecca Fraker and their daughter Maddy from Snowflake, took the second tour of the day this past summer and discovered how people lived along the Little Colorado River hundreds of years ago.
    Springerville native Jonathan Hill was their tour guide, stopping along the steep trail to point out landmarks in the valley below and on the distant mountain ranges.  When the ancient people enjoyed the view it must have been a time of peace, Hill surmised, because the settlement in the tumble of basalt rocks would have been difficult to defend against an invader.
Casa Malpais tour 2007
The tour group pauses with their guide Jonathan Hill on top of ruined walls of Casa Malpais pueblo.  They have a view of the green floor of
Round Valley below them, with Becker Lake in the distance and the White Mountains on the horizon, beneath a blanket of monsoon clouds.

     He took the Frakers and the Nashes inside the Great Kiva, partially restored but lacking a roof.  They were shown shards of the different types of pottery found at the site.  The kiva is the only room that has seen reconstruction, but local volunteers continue to work to preserve the entire site.  Farther along the trail, Hill pointed to incised petroglyphs of corn stalks, frogs and Hopi style hairdos and a rare, painted pictograph of what looks like a dog.  One stick-figure glyph has been widely interpreted by archaeologists, but Casa Malpais guides refrain from assigning meaning to glyphs.

Guide Jonathan Hill leads the group down the "staircase."Casa Malpais stairs 2007
     The three-quarter mile trail is steep and rocky in places, and is not handicapped accessible, so Museum Manager Linda Matthews recommends wearing good hiking shoes.  Finally at the sheer lava cliffs, the Frakers and the Nashes followed Hill up primitive steps formed from broken rocks, through a narrow gash in the cliff face to emerge on top of the rim with a view of thunder clouds building over the distant peaks.  Well worth the climb, judged the adventurers.
     They continued to question their guide at every turn.  How much of the ruin has been reconstructed?  What did it look like when occupied?  Peering down into an excavated room with the original walls showing the mortar placed by the ancient builders, they learned that they were actually standing on the rubble filling adjacent rooms.  Like some of the existing Hopi and Zuni pueblos, the inhabitants entered their homes from a hatch in the roof via a ladder.  There are no doors to the outside, only doorways to interior rooms.  And the community habitat was a stacking of rooms, possibly up to three stories tall.
     Hill pointed out the farming terraces below the pueblo and the special petroglyphs that mark the seasons as rays of sunlight fall across their features.  Knowing planting times and harvest times was so important that a round arena below the pueblo served as a kind of solar calendar, marking the solstices and the equinoxes.
     “We get people from around the world, and always have,” Matthews relates.  She started as a volunteer on the archaeological dig from 1991 to 1994, then returned in 2003 as a guide.  Other guides are Dennis Ambrose, Jonathan Hill, Susan Myers and Kileen Smith.  Cost of tours is, $8 for adults, $6 for over 60, $5 for children and students.  Special tours for groups can be arranged.  For more information call 928-333-5375.
[written 29  November  2007, corrected April, 2008]

     Archaeologists believe the pueblo was constructed from AD1240 to 1284, and was used until 1350.  Both the Hopi and Zuni tribes claim the builders of Casa Malpais as ancestors.  Hispanic shepherds in the area named the site after the broken basalt terrain.  Frank Hamilton Cushing first described the ruin in 1883.  In 1947 it was mapped by Edward Danson for the Peabody Museum of Harvard University.

at top of Casa Malpais 2007
At the top of the rim of Round Valley above Casa Malpais ruin, visitors Jane Nash (foreground), Rebecca Fraker, Maddy Fraker
and tour guide Jonathan Hill rest from the steep climb and take in the view.  At right, on the horizon looms the bulky mass of
Escudilla Mountain, third highest in Arizona.
 
 Home Page   -   About Us   -   Ariz Hwys zines   -  Route 66   -  order form
  Apache County Nature Areas   -   Petrified Forest  -  Colorado Plateau Gardening