No visitor center. No passport stamp. No park sign. No public access.
A National Park Service site you can’t actually visit. Well, actually you can… kind of. Interstate I-10, at Goodyear Road, crosses through the corner of the Hohokam Pima National Monument boundary. So visit it we did. Twice. At 75 miles an hour traveling from Phoenix to Tucson and then back to Phoenix.
Hohokam Pima National Monument recognizes the significance of Snaketown, a Hohokam village inhabited from about 300 AD to around 1200 AD. This ancient village, which may have had as many as 2,000 inhabitants, is within the Gila River Indian Reservation near Sacaton, Arizona. Due to the sensitive nature of this site, the Gila River Indian Community has decided not to open this site to the public.
The Huhugam Heritage Center (HHC) highlights the ancestral, historic and current cultures of the Gila River Indian Community including archeological holdings from Snaketown. Alas, at the time of our visit the museum was closed for construction.
