When I recently visited Deer Valley Rock Art Center, in north Phoenix, the docent made several mentions of Hohokam ruins atop Perry Mesa, in Agua Fria National Monument, southeast of our lovely mountain town.

On the way back from my weekend visit to the Valley of the Sun, the urge hit to check out the area most clearly identified by the Bureau of Land Management as having such ruins:  Pueblo La Plata.  It lies at the business end of a narrow, rocky and rather uninviting switchback, but as luck would have it, the road was dry and the rocks were not jutting up too high for my little Kia to handle.  When we got to the top, the scene above greeted us, looking like a stunt double for the Bonneville Salt Flats.

I parked Kia Optima off to the side of the road, giving her a chance to get some serious rest.  Another 1 1/2 miles of hiking northward brought me to the remote Hohokam site.

There are 32 “rooms” preserved here, very much indicating that some serious living took place on top of Perry Mesa, long before Perry showed up here.  This is the northernmost area settled by the Hohokam alone.  They did visit the areas now occupied by Prescott, Camp Verde and Mayer, but there were other groups there as well.  So, Pueblo La Plata, with its proximity to Silver Creek, hosted a sizable community of farmers, traders and hunters.

Numerous shards of pottery and arrowheads may be found, in a couple of places arranged on flat rocks, for visitors to see and hopefully not add to their private collections.  A ranger was present, while two couples and I were enjoying the views.

After about thirty minutes, it was time for me to head back.  Kia and I had no trouble going down the grumpy old switchback.  You can see an SUV from California likewise made short work of the downhill.

There are other areas of Agua Fria I’d like to visit sometime soon.  I need Kia for several more journeys though, so next time, I may just park at the foot of the switchback, and pretend Perry Mesa is the South Rim of Grand Canyon.