The flow and evaporation of salty river water has occurred over time. The salt present in the Salt River comes from springs in the eastern part of the watershed. It can even be a problem in your own yard, or you nearby city park. Soil salinity is a problem that even modern-day farmers must manage. Salt accumulation on farm fields reduces the chance of growing healthy crops. If the soil is not properly drained, there can be a buildup of salt in the soil. Salt River irrigation water that is put on crops can evaporate. ![]() In addition, the Lower Salt River valley is within the hot-dry Sonoran Desert. Unfortunately for the Hohokam, the water that runs in the Salt River is, well, salty. Unfortunately, the water in the river contained natural salts, and hurt their farming practices. In historic times, the Hohokam farmed near the river. The Salt River runs through the Salt River Valley. They were also built with stone tools rather than metal tools. An amazing feature of those prehistoric canals is that they were built without the aid of horses or cattle as energy sources. Today, modern development has destroyed most, if not all the canal structures. Irrigation canals built by the Hohokam were features that the first settlers in the Lower Salt River valley could see. That’s about 932 miles, longer than the driving distance from Phoenix to Boise, Idaho. The Hohokam created the greatest series of canals in the prehistoric Americas north of Peru.Īrchaeological and soil science studies tell us that the Hohokam were able to build more than 1,500 kilometers of canals. ![]() ![]() They are well-known for their irrigation engineering. A North American group called the Hohokam lived 600-1600 years ago in the Lower Salt River valley in Arizona. It is an effort to add water to crops when rainfall is not enough to grow those crops. Irrigation is a common farming practice, several thousand years old.
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