Inspiring NHD students across the nation and around the world is a big job. Each year, NHD affiliates are asked for topics that will encourage NHD students to explore the theme through the lens of local history. Only ten topics were chosen for the 2027 NHD theme book with the subject "Innovation in History: Impact, Influence, Change."
Congrats to LEONARD MOODY Affiliate Co-ordinator NHDAZ and VANESSA FAJARDO Exhibits Co-ordinator AHS, their history of the Hohokam people with their diverse stories of people, places and events are featured on page 11 of the NHD Theme Book.
Helping sponsor the National History Day Arizona Program is a goal of The Historical League.
ARIZONA
LEONARD MOODY, Affiliate Coordinator, National History Day in Arizona
VANESSA FAJARDO, Exhibits Coordinator, Arizona Historical Society
The Hohokam were an ancient agricultural people in Southern Arizona known for their innovative irrigation system and flourishing society that lasted from approximately the first century CE to 1450. They created the largest known prehistoric irrigated land system in the Americas, and perhaps the world. This system of canals had a profound impact on maintaining culture and civilization both in the past and into the present day. The Hohokam initially grew beans, squash, corn, and cotton, serving a small population of fewer than 1,000.
Around AD 600, this changed, and the population grew, pushing the Hohokam farther from the river. Using hand tools called digging sticks, the Hohokam created a system of canals to bring water to their new settlements. These 12-foot trenches led to a larger network of canals, which supplied water throughout the Sonoran Desert, an area that includes present-day metropolitan Phoenix. The irrigation system allowed the Hohokam to successfully support agriculture in otherwise difficult growing conditions. At its peak, the Hohokam had a population of as many as 80,000. The innovative canal system is a significant reason why the Hohokam settlement and farming were possible in the harsh environment of the Sonoran Desert.
Around the fifteenth century, however, the Hohokam community experienced drastic change. Archaeologists continue to research the causes, but are unsure of why the Hohokam abandoned most of their settlements. Some theories hold that they migrated to Mexico after an extended drought, or that they eventually evolved culturally into the Akimel O’odham and/or Tohono O’odham (both Indigenous
groups of the Sonoran Desert). Centuries later, the Hohokam had a significant influence on the major settlement that would eventually become Phoenix, Arizona.
In the mid-1800s, Jack Swilling, a former Confederate soldier, came across abandoned Hohokam canals and recognized their potential. He realized that
these ancient waterways would bring much-needed water to the area’s settlers and re-established the canals. Thus, this existing infrastructure greatly influenced the city’s urban development and modernization. To improve water accessibility, the federal government (under the auspices of the Bureau of Reclamation) built the Theodore Roosevelt Dam to help settlers control the unpredictable waters of the Salt River. The project was completed in 1910.
The ancient canal beds impacted the development of a twentieth century urban area and provided the foundation for irrigation systems in modern-day Arizona. As they did more than 500 years ago, the reconstructed canals transformed what were desert valleys into thriving agricultural areas that allowed people to settle and to have a reliable food and water supply. Even today, concrete water lines in Phoenix follow many of the original paths made by the Hohokam. The Hohokam canal system is a prime example of innovation in history because it not only created a way to access water in the desert, but also laid the roadmap for future settlement.
QUESTIONS
› Why did the creation of irrigation canals represent an innovation in Arizona agricultural history, both ancient and modern?
› How did the Hohokam irrigation canals influence later settlement and farming practices in the Phoenix Basin in the state of Arizona?
› How does the map of the canals represent influence, and why do you think it was created? Who do you think developed it?
Created in 1929, a survey map showing prehistoric irrigation canals built by the Hohokam Native Tribe. Map of Prehistoric Irrigation Canals.
Arizona Historical Society, TP Oversized Mounted Collection (1988.45.17/100-0006054).
NATIONAL HISTORY DAY 2027 THEME BOOK, page 11
