66 CASA GRANDE, ARIZONA [BTH. ANN. 28 
BARTLETT'S NARRATIVE 
Six years after the advance guard of the “Army of the West”’ 
crossed southern Arizona the ruins were visited by members of the 
Mexican Boundary Survey, one of whom, John Russell Bartlett, was 
the author of an excellent account, accompanied with a sketch 
(fig. 6). Under date of July 12, 1852, Mr. Bartlett wrote of Casa 
Grande as follows:1 
’ 
The ‘Casas Grandes,’’ or Great Houses, consist of three buildings, all included 
within a space of 150 yards. The principal and larger one is in the best state of preser- 
vation, its four exterior walls and most of the inner ones remaining. A considerable 
portion of the upper part of the walls has crumbled away and fallen inwards, as appears 
from the great quantity of rubbish and disintegrated adobe which fills the first story 
of the building. Three stories now stand and can plainly be made out by the ends 
Fic?6. Casa Grande ruin in 1852 (Bartlett). 
of the beams remaining in the walls, or by the cavities which they occupied; but I 
think there must have been another story above, in order to account for the crumbling 
walls and rubbish within. The central portion or tower rising from the foundation, 
is some 8 or 10 feet higher than the outer walls, and may have been several feet, prob- 
ably one story, higher when the building was complete. The walls at the base are 
between 4 and 5 feet in thickness; their precise dimensions could not be ascertained, 
so much having crumbled away. The inside is perpendicular, while the exterior 
face tapers toward the top, in a curved line. These walls, as well as the division 
walls of the interior, are laid with large square blocks of mud, prepared for the pur- 
pose by pressing the material into large boxes about 2 feet in height and 4 feet long. 
When the mud became sufficiently hardened, the case was moved along and again 
filled, and so on until the whole edifice was completed. This is a rapid mode of 
building; but the Mexicans seem never to have applied it to any purpose but the 
1 Personal Narrative, etc., 11, 272-277, New York, 1854. Cozzens’ account, in his Marvellous Country, is 
practically a quotation from Bartlett here given. In the map of his ‘‘route’’ Casa Grande is located 
north instead of south of the Gila. 
