Spur Cross

If you go hiking in Spur Cross in the town of Cave Creek, you may find yourself on a trail that eventually takes you into the Tonto National Forest. Yes, it’s still desert, but it is a wildlife refuge, and holds plenty of history from before the colonization of America. 

Our hike led us through Spur Cross and 2 miles into the Tonto National Forest to find a cluster of rocks that held petroglyphs from the Hohokam people who were here long before us. This culture occupied the Phoenix Basin for 2000 years and was known for their agricultural skills and great canal systems they created for farming. These are the people that left these images for us to find 600 or more years later. 

Many people came after the Hohokam disappeared and passed through their abandoned lands like the Apache, the miners, and the settlers. All would have seen these petroglyphs and stared at them the same way I did. I can only wonder what the images mean, and what others thought about them as they passed through this valley.