Besh Ba Gowah Historic Site

Driving from Globe to Wilcox, AZ | Besh Ba Gowah Historic Site | Coronado National Forest | December 2023

After a relaxing and enjoyable time spent in the Tonto Basin, we felt like it was time to get going…somewhere. We threw around ideas and places that we thought sounded interesting that were nearby and still in SE Arizona. We still weren’t sure what we were going to do for Christmas, and I still had one peak I was hoping to hike. We ultimately decided that we would make our way back to Wilcox and the cranes, taking some routes we had never driven before.

First we retraced our way back to Globe. There we stopped briefly at Round Mountain park with the intention of hiking and playing Pokemon. But the reception was bad and the wind cold, and having hiked in this area two years ago, we decided we should go somewhere we hadn’t been. So we instead opted to go to the nearby historic site managed by the city of Globe: Besh Ba Gowah.

Like Tonto National Monument, Besh Ba Gowah is a Salado cultural site first built around 1150 AD and subsequently abandoned around 1450 AD. But instead of a cliff dwelling like at Tonto NM, Besh Ba Gowah was a large city complex next to a stream flowing down from Pinal Peak. In this way it was visually similar to other Ancestral Pueblan sites we’ve seen at Wupatki, Hovenweep, and the Canyon of the Ancients (though this site distinctly lacks the Kiva found elsewhere).

Most of the walls are original, and we were free to walk around and through the complex with Charlotte. But the really remarkable part of this site was the museum, and the story of the archaeological digs. Fortunately, Charlie was allowed in the museum itself so we all filed through and admired the rows of cases filled with the ornate poly-chromatic pottery that the Salado culture was known for. According to the docent, this was just a fraction of the total number of ceramics found during the original dig in 1935.

Around that time, Irene Vickrey moved to Globe as a cure to a respiratory condition. There she met her husband over their mutual love for archaeology, and together they fell into the sphere of influence of the leading minds of Southwestern archaeology: Emil Haury and Byron Cummings. In 1935, as part of the Works Projects Administration, the city of Globe acquired funding to conduct an excavation of the site and Irene Vickrey was placed in charge. For the next 5 years, she would lead the digs and eventually found the museum at the site she named Besh Ba Gowah (the Apache name for Globe, literally ‘Place of Metal’). Jess joked that only a woman would name an archaeological site for something other than herself (looking at you, Russell Cave).

Unfortunately, Irene’s respiratory illness worsened, and she died at only the age of 35 in 1946, before she could even publish here findings on the Salado culture. Without her force of will, the site was almost forgotten. The city of Globe put up a baseball diamond and parking lots literally right over some of the half buried ruins. It wasn’t until the 1980’s that the city began to restore and conserve the existing structures and add the site to the NRHP.

We finished up our tour of the museum and then hit the road heading East on US-70, passing through the Apache Reservation. In Safford, we went South around Mt. Graham before following the highway out to Fort Grant where we found some dispersed camping in the National Forest. We had never been to this part of the forest and found it quite enjoyable. The rocks and short mountains were visually similar to the Dragoons or Chiricahua National Monument (and probably are geologically linked). After setting up the van we took a walk around on old 4×4 tracks. We really enjoyed this place and would stay here again, even though there was more traffic on the highway than we expected, and the coyotes howling sounded so close that we felt like we needed to keep Charlotte by our side at all times!

The next day we finished the drive down to Wilcox, where we had invited Mitch and Emily to come out and watch the cranes with us. The showing was a little less dramatic than our first day, but our friends both agreed that it was well worth coming out for. Our guess is that when we first came here at the beginning of December, it was a colder and rainy day, so all the cranes came back early and hung out at the lake, while today was warm and sunny so they spent more time away from the lakes feeding, then eventually all flew in around sunset.