Mysterious Indian Ruins near Globe, AZ

I was invited a while back to take a trip with a friend from work to go and try to find some secret Indian ruins outside of Globe, Arizona. We had a basic understanding of where these were by studying the satellite view on google maps but we didn’t really know how to get there. To our knowledge, there is no information on the internet about these ruins, or even the whereabouts.

We started early in the morning meeting at a gas station in Phoenix. We drove for a few hours out to globe and ended up near some ranches, and there was a trail with a ledger on one of the ranches. We signed in early and made our way back onto the property in our vehicles. Eventually we pulled up to some type of corral with a small water trough which didn’t look like it was very clean anymore. We were at our starting point and headed toward where we thought the ruins ought to be.

We were headed toward the mound on the right. No clue as to how far we hiked to get to it. There were no trails and we had to bushwhack our way to it and hopefully find a way up to the top.

As we got closer we realized this was going to be a little difficult to figure out how to get to the top with out any gear really other than the boots on our feet and backpacks filled with water and snacks.

We continued toward our chosen area to explore. The desert was cool and crisp that morning and we could see the many cacti and desert brush plants surrounding us. I scored a free cactus spine in my arm on the way down, and pulled it out with a leather man tool!

We got to the base of the mound and decided to go up to the left, and scramble around to try to find the top.

We found a lot of moss growth on some of the rocks facing the west.

As we started nearing the top we had an almost 360 degree view around us.

We had made it and found exactly what we were looking for on google map’s satellite view. The ruins were pretty cool to see and we were glad that we found it, it was like a treasure hunt.  We started to ask all kinds of questions to each other. We wondered where these people got water from, as well as food.

Did they have to travel far to get everything up to the top? What were the many different rooms for? Who were they trying to protect themselves from being that they were so high up off the ground. There was no easy way up to the top so it would have been quite the effort to bring up food, water, and building materials.

We wondered if the walls were only built as high as we could see them or if they have just been broken down over time. Were there roofs on these structures? How many people lived here? Was this just a ceremonial site or a small community, or just a small family that lived here?

As we looked around we never found any artifacts or anything, no pottery, metates, arrows, hatchets, spears, or anything that would resemble a tool. We saw no evidence of burials, or graves near the top, or on our hike up to it.

It’s as if the people, tools, and everything else had vanished from this site all at once, except for the remaining walls. We scanned the desert surrounding this mysterious place and couldn’t see any other ruins on the mountain tops nor anything else for miles, other than lake Roosevelt in the distance to the west.

The answers to all these questions may never be known. It would be cool to go back in time for a day to see what was going on here and how it looked. To be honest, I don’t know if I could even remember how to get back to this place.

This was one very interesting adventure for the books that created many opportunities for questions and studying. I got home from this wanting to know more but really could not find anything on these ruins on the internet. Maybe its best that some places and sites in this world remain a mystery to the few that are able to find and explore them.

“Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of mans desire to understand” – Neil Armstrong