Casa Grande Ruin - Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the - Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1891-92, - Government Printing Office, Washington, 1896, pages 289-318 by Cosmos Mindeleff
page 29 of 44 (65%)
page 29 of 44 (65%)
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The walls of the northern room are fairly well preserved, except in the
northeastern corner, which has fallen. The principal floor beams were of necessity laid north and south, across the shorter axis of the room, while the secondary series of poles, 1½ inches in diameter, have left their impression in the eastern and western walls. There is no setback in the northern wall at the first floor level, though there is a very slight one in the southern wall; none appears in the eastern and western walls. Yet in the second roof level there is a double setback of 9 and 5 inches in the western wall, and the northern wall has a setback of 9 inches, and the top of the wall still shows the position of nearly all the roof timbers. This suggests--and the suggestion is supported by other facts to be mentioned later--that the northern room was added after the completion of the rest of the edifice. The second roof or third floor level, the present top of the wall, has a decided pitch outward, amounting to nearly 5 inches. Furthermore, the outside of the northern wall of the middle room, above the second roof level of the northern room, is very much eroded. This indicates that the northern room never had a greater height than two stories, but probably the walls were crowned with low parapets. In this connection it may be stated that a calculation of the amount of débris within the building and for a distance of 10 feet about it in every direction, the interior floor level being determined by excavation, showed an amount of material which, added to the walls, would raise them less than 3 feet; in other words, the present height of the walls is very nearly the maximum height. Subsequent to this examination the ruin was cleared out by contractors for the Government in carrying out a plan for the repair and preservation of the ruin, and it was reported that in one of the rooms a |
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