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SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS 



VOL. 52 



eating the surrounding wall of a compound (fig. 67), can still be 

 traced. Rough measurements of the last-mentioned wall show that 

 its dimensions were about 210 feet by 120 feet. The ruin is situated 

 not far from the railroad from Mesa City to Florence. In the 

 springtime it can be readily seen from a distance as a mound of 

 earth looming above the cacti and mesquites. The walls of this ruin 

 were partially constructed of stones, none of which now project to 

 any considerable height above the surface of the ground. 



Apparently the Escalante compound had, in addition to a cen- 

 trally placed building, a cluster of rooms in its northwest corner. 

 There are also other mounds near it, indicating rooms .in the neigh- 

 borhood, although some of these show no signs of walls and were 

 evidently piles of debris or rubbish heaps. 



This settlement was supplied with water by one of the best- 

 preserved ancient irrigating ditches the writer has seen in the 



Gila-Salt Valley. This 

 ditch follows the Gila 

 from a point several 

 miles higher up the 

 river and extends to 

 the neighborhood of 

 the Escalante ruin, 

 where it is lost in 

 "laterals" or minor 

 subdivisions. At a 

 point near Posten's 

 Butte, the southern 

 side of which it skirts. 



FIG. 67. Escalante Ruin 



the banks of this prehistoric ditch are head high and can be traced 

 for many hundred feet without difficulty. The writer has been 

 informed by an old Mexican, who lives in Florence, that when a 

 boy he saw old stumps of logs in this ditch at the point where the 

 banks are highest and he believed that these stumps were remnants 

 of a prehistoric gate. 



In the following quotation Mr. H. C. Hodge 1 refers to a pre- 

 historic irrigation ditch on the north side of the Gila near Posten's 

 Butte : 



"About two miles west of Florence, on the north side of the river, between 

 the homes of Mr. Stiles and Mr. Long, is a stretch of hard, stony land, 

 through which another of the large irrigating canals was cut, and where for 

 several hundred yards one can ride on horseback in the canal, which is yet so 

 deep one cannot look over its banks on either side when sitting on his horse." 



Arizona as it is, or the Coming Country, 1877, p. 182. 



