Hohokam Farming and Irrigation

The Hohokam people dwelt in an area which was mostly low desert dotted with isolated mountain areas. The desert gave them long summers with little rain, followed by mild and cool winters with occasional downpours. Most streams in this area were intermittent, with the exception of the Gila, Salt, San Pedro and Santa Cruz Rivers and a few tributaries. The Hohokam lived comfortably and happily in this arid region for centuries.

The huge Hohokam territory comprised approximately 45 000 square miles of the northern Sonoran Desert, stretching northwards to the Mogollon Rim, south into present-day Mexico, east to Arizona's Dragoon Mountains and to the Growler Mountains in the west. Rainfall in this region averages only around seven to ten inches per year; most of this comes as light rain in December and January and as ferocious downpours in July and August. This pattern gave the Hohokam opportunity to plant and harvest crops nearly nine months of the year.

The Hohokam utilised extensive and ingenious canal systems to irrigate thousands of acres of their farmland; more than three hundred miles of major canals, and nearly three times that number of smaller canals, have been recorded in the lower Salt River valley alone (Houk 1992: 8). As well as their irrigated crops of maize, lima and tepary beans, squash, tobacco, cotton, barley and amaranth, the Hohokam gathered saguaro cactus fruit, prickly pear pads, cholla cactus buds, plantain, mesquite beans and agave from the wild desert. Maize kernels recovered from Hohokam dwelling sites have been dated to 300 B.C., or the time of the earliest Hohokam settlements.

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This site prepared as part of WestWeb by Warrick Bell and Catherine Lavender. Graphics © 1998, 1999 Warrick Bell.
Last modified 13 September 1999