Homol'ovi II

The Hopi call these people Hisatsinom, the ones who came before, and they have never let go of the tie. Around 1330, families from the Hopi Mesas sixty miles north settled this bluff above the Little Colorado and raised a village of some twelve hundred rooms, farming cotton and corn in the floodplain below. Looters ravaged the site through the 1980s until Arizona made it a state park. In 2011 the Hopi asked the state to strike 'Ruins' from the park's name; these places are not dead to them but spiritually alive.

What the plaque says

Around A.D. 1330, a group of people arrived from the Hopi Mesas, 60 miles north, drawn by the lush flood plain of the Little Colorado River. These people built a 1200 room village; 750 to 1000 people lived in this pueblo. The people farmed in the flood plain and in the sand dunes. They grew corn, beans, squash and cotton. They also gathered wild foods such as pigweed, Indian rice grass, cactus and yucca fruits, and piñon nuts. Research and excavations by Arizona State Museum at Homol'ovi II revealed three plazas, outdoor activity areas, possibly 40 kivas, and living, working, and storage areas.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Winslow — 5.2 mi
  The town an Eagles lyric made famous — and the home of La Posada, the last great railroad hotel and Mary Colter's finest work, at the southern doorway to Hopi and Navajo country.

More markers nearby

• Mormon Pioneers Along the Little Colorado River — 2.7 mi
• General Lot Smith — 2.8 mi
• A City in Motion: Modern Modes — 5.2 mi
• The First Peoples of the Southwestern Colorado Plateau — 5.2 mi