They were skilled farmers and would manage the soil to replace lost nutrients. The canal systems allowed the Hohokam to farm corn, cotton, beans, tobacco and squash.
“The only thing that rivals it is on the desert coast of Peru, and those canals aren’t as large.” “In its engineering and size, the canal system is bigger and more sophisticated than any irrigation in the prehistoric New World,” Howard says. These systems sustained the largest population in the prehistoric Southwest. By the year 1300 AD there were thousands of miles of canals that were used at different times, and irrigated nearly 110,000 acres of crops. The longest canal that has been found reached over 20 miles.
It’s an extraordinary effort of engineering and social organization.” According to Jerry Howard, the curator of anthropology at the Museum of Natural History, “That’s monstrous. This canal was 15 feet deep and 45 feet wide. The Museum of Natural History in Mesa discovered one of the Hohokam canals at the north end of Dobson Road. Several of the canals were enormous in size. These canals were laid out over the landscape on a downhill drop of 1 to 2 feet per mile. In order to meet their needs, they created highly sophisticated and large irrigation systems. The Hohokam lived in the dry desert, which means there was not enough rainfall alone to grow crops. The Hohokam were Arizona’s first farmers.įor their time, the Hohokam were the only culture in North America that relied on irrigation canals to water their crops. They built a society around irrigated agriculture that was watered by elaborate canal systems they created. The Hohokam were one of the first tribes in Arizona to give up the hunting and foraging lifestyle. They inhabited parts of southern and central Arizona near the Salt, Gila, Verde, Santa Cruz, and San Pedro rivers from around the year 600 to around 1450 AD. The Hohokam were one of the United States’ first great Native American civilizations.
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