WEEKEND GETAWAY: PHOENIX

getaway weekend A SEARCH for ANCIENT HISTORY Near Phoenix Uncovers Petroglyphs, Artwork and Ruins

NOT FAR FROM BUSY PHOENIX, I stood among ghosts and peered mournfully back through time. The mud-patted remains of an ancient civilization slumped, dreaming, all around me the enigmatic ruins of Casa Grande, a village built half a millennium ago by the Hohokam, the civilization from whose ashes the rising Phoenix earned its name. The massive four-story structure, constructed of lime-rich caliche clay dried to the consistency of concrete, was occupied for perhaps 100 years before its builders vanished into mystery. I'd taken it as my starting point for a tour of the Phoenix area's Indian heritage, which runs like a thread of gold through a Navajo blanket. There's so much to see that I could easily have spent days completing this trek instead of the one day I had. Phoenix actually has a longer history than any other American city if you know where to look. The highlights include my first stop, the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument near Coolidge, and in Phoenix, the Pueblo Grande Museum and Archaeological Park, the worldrenowned Heard Museum and the Deer Valley Rock Art Center.

The ruins of Casa Grande, 50 miles south of Phoenix off Interstate 10, draw about 165,000 visitors a year, and remain the single most impressive Hohokam legacy. Between 1,700 and 1,500 years ago, these people first established villages along the Salt, Gila and Verde rivers, whose ancient intersection made modern Phoenix possible. The Hohokam culture gradually grew more complex and successful, relying on an engineering marvel of canals. The civilization, which peaked between A.D. 1100 and A.D. 1400, boasted large structures in walled villages around plazas, ball courts and mounds topped by elite buildings. In this "classic" period, the Hohokam built this place, Hottai-Ki, a word from the Pima Indians meaning the "great house," using caliche and more than 600 beams hauled from up to 50 miles away. I wandered past the melted mud walls of the support buildings, then around the central structure, which still seemed ancient and mysterious although rendered somewhat incongruous by the pagodalike roof put up to protect the walls from the rain.

As the first visitor through the door, I had the place to myself quiet, except for the sighing of the ghosts. Then I headed for the exhibits, which feature exquisite Hohokam craftsmanship in bowls, with wonderful hand-painted geometric designs and droll animal shapes, plus delicate works made of shell and turquoise. I had to restrain myself in the gift shop, mostly because of the rich array of books about the Hohokam people and the Sonoran Desert.

But I had a lot of ground to cover, so I hopped into the car and drove up the freeway back into Phoenix to the Pueblo Grande Museum and Archaeological Park, located on East Washington Street alongside one of the modern concrete-lined canals built on the alignment of the ancient Hohokam waterways that allowed civilization in this arid terrain. The partially preserved 1,500year-old village in a 102-acre park belonging to the City of Phoenix encompasses the ruins of an 800-year-old platform mound, old canals and a ball court, on which people played games of deep religious and cultural significance. Signs on a two-thirds-of-a-mile walk offered me plenty of information about the village's history. Pueblo Grande's excellent exhibits provide one of the best places to grasp the scope of the Hohokam civilization. The Museum Store offers many books, American Indian jewelry and pottery, games and books for kids, shirts, compact discs, tapes and other treasures. I could not resist a tape of Navajo songs and more books about the Anasazi people. The museum shares its wealth of knowledge through school programs and regular tours for visitors interested in the fascinating rise and mysterious collapse of the Hohokam civilization in the 1400s. Many experts think the Hohokam people fell victim to some combination of drought and flooding that destroyed their irrigation works perhaps in conjunction with over-population or invasion by newcomers. By the time the Spanish arrived in the 1500s, the Hohokam cities lay in ruins, although the Akimel O'odham people lived along the rivers and practiced agriculture on a much-reduced scale.

A 15-minute drive north from Pueblo Grande took me to midtown Phoenix, where the Heard Museum has been showcasing more recent Native American art and culture for 70 years. The museum got its start from the private collections of Dwight and Maie Heard, among the largest landowners in Phoenix's history. The couple spent decades collecting artifacts, which they stashed in their rambling home. After her husband's death in 1929, Maie turned the house into a museum. An $18-million expansion, completed in 1999, nearly doubled the museum's size to 130,000 square feet. The Heard now boasts 32,000 works of art and ethnographic objects and 3,600 pieces of contemporary art, with thousands of those displayed in 10 exhibit galleries, which include information from the array

of Native American cultures of the Southwest. The renovations included a 400-seat auditorium, classrooms, a cafe and an expanded museum shop and bookstore to cater to 250,000 visitors per year. I felt like I could have spent days browsing through these exhibits alone. And I could have happily spent thousands of dollars in the Heard Museum Shop and Bookstore, with its national reputation for Native American art. The store offers an outlet for hundreds of artists and artisans who produce jewelry, pottery, paintings, sculptures, kachina dolls and weavings. (A second shop at el Pedregal Festival Marketplace in north Scottsdale gives the museum a presence in a town whose galleries specializing in Native American art rival Santa Fe's.) The Heard's store offers a visual feast, with sculptures, gleaming jewelry, piles of colorful Navajo blankets, display cases bursting with joyful, intricately crafted Hopi kachinas and shelves loaded with hard-to-find LOCATION: Phoenix, and Coolidge, 50 miles south of Phoenix.

WEATHER: April average high, 85°; average low, 55°.

PHONE NUMBERS: Area code is 602 unless noted; 800 series numbers are toll-free.

RESTAURANTS: Richardson's Cuisine of New Mexico, 1582 E. Bethany Home Road, Phoenix; 265-5886.

ATTRACTIONS: Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, 1100 Ruins Drive, Coolidge (50 miles south of Phoenix, off Interstate 10, Coolidge exit, follow the signs to the park entrance off State Route 87/287); (520) 723-3172. Admission: $2 to $4. Open 7 days a week 8 A.M. to 5 P.M.; closed Christmas.

Deer Valley Rock Art Center, 3711 W. Deer Valley Road, Phoenix; (623) 582-8007. Admission: $1 to $4. Open Tuesdays through Saturdays, 9 A.M. to 5 P.M.; Sundays, noon to 5 P.M.

Heard Museum, 2301 N. Central Ave., Phoenix; 2528840. Admission: $3 to $7. Open 7 days a week, 9:30 A.M. to 5 P.M. Closed all major holidays.

Heard Museum North Shop, el Pedregal Festival Marketplace, Scottsdale Road and Carefree Highway, Scottsdale; (480) 488-9817. No admission fee. Call for hours.

Pueblo Grande Museum and Archaeological Park, 4619 E. Washington St., Phoenix; 495-0901. Admission: $1 to $2, free on Sundays. Open Mondays through Saturdays, 9 A.M. to 4:45 P.M.; Sundays, 1 P.M. to 4:45 P.M.; closed Christmas.

TRAVEL ADVISORY: Call for guided tour schedules.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Greater Phoenix Convention & Visitors Bureau, (877) 225-5749.

books. On this visit, I settled for a beautifully wrought silver bola tie set with a waxy-smooth, dark-veined piece of turquoise costing more than I would have paid on the reservation but of better quality than I would have found in most stores in Phoenix.

On my way to my last stop at the north end of Phoenix, I resolved to feed my body as well as my mind, so I detoured by Richardson's Cuisine of New Mexico on East Bethany Home Road, one of my favorite Phoenix eateries in part because of their creativity in mixing fruit drinks. Of course the cool, comfortable booths, the affable central bar, the daily shift in the menu and the use of delicate and surprising sauces with ingredients like mangos don't hurt, either.

Pleasantly fortified, I made it to the Deer Valley Rock Art Center, just off Interstate 17 on Deer Valley Road. The Hedgpeth Hills petroglyph site contains more than 1,500 examples of rock art pecked into the sun-darkened surface of volcanic boulders. The Army Corps of Engineers built nearby Adobe Dam in 1980 to control flooding along Skunk Creek and moved several boulders covered with petroglyphs out of the way. Arizona State University's Anthropology Department now operates the site and conducts ongoing research. The oldest of the designs date back about 5,000 years. One culture after another was drawn to these basaltic rocks whose surfaces were covered with a dark coating formed by a thin layer of magnesium-rich clay and dust cemented to the surface by a bacteria found in arid regions.

Ancient artists simply chipped away this darker surface layer to expose the lighter rock beneath. Because the exposed rock gradually reacquired a coat of desert varnish, scientists can date the drawings.

Most of the designs, etched between 2,000 and 5,000 years ago, are geometric designs of indeterminate meaning, but others depict spirals and animals, human forms with exaggerated fingers or the outlines of hands that resemble drawings found in western Arizona, made between A.D. 300 and A.D. 1450. Clearly, eons of overlapping cultures felt drawn to this sun-seared place. The easy, quartermile trail takes visitors through the heart of the petroglyph panels but keeps them from touching the designs, which would eventually destroy them. In spring, when I was there, wildflowers dotted the ground along the path.

I stood and simply marveled as the light faded. The moment seemed the perfect climax to the tour, and I found myself wishing I knew the proper prayers for such a place. Ancient prayers rioted on all sides: a tilted bighorn sheep, a dancer clutching a spear, a line of deer nose to tail, a dragonlike abstraction and a carefully pecked spiral.

My eyes came to rest finally on a spiral, made with ancient wisdom and modern relevance: Everything changes. Nothing changes. The Earth spins, the seasons fade, the mountains rise, the rocks crumble. The pattern endlessly repeats. The mammoth-hunters gave way to the corn-growers who gave way to we asphalt people, as we will give way in our turn. The spiral-maker came here 5,000 years ago to leave his mark and I have come in my own season to look and wonder for a little while as the light yields to another round of night. AlH