Rating:
Round Trip Distance: 0.5 -1.3 miles
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 4840 - 4946 feet
Cellphone: 2-4 bars
Time: 1 hr.
Trailhead: Homolovi II
Fee: $7/vehicle
Attractions: Ancestral Puebloan ruins, petroglyphs, pottery sherds
The Homolovi II ruin is located in the Homolovi State Park near Winslow, Arizona. Homolovi (huh-MALL-uh-vee) is a Hopi word that means 'place of the little hills'. Several of the trail signs offer contradictory information about the number of rooms that the Homolovi II site once contained. One sign has the number at around 800 rooms housing several thousand people and another has it at around 1200 rooms with 750 to 1000 people. The site did have 3 plazas and possibly 40 kivas. The rooms ranged from single story up to 2 to 3 stories. The large village must have seemed like quite the metropolis in its heyday.
The trailhead for the Homolovi II Ruin is located past the Visitor Center at the end of the park road.
The main trail around the ruins is paved and wheelchair accessible.
At the top of the hill continue straight ahead on the short paved section of trail.
Here you will find a partially reconstructed block of rooms where some were used for living space and some for storage.
The rocks along the sides of the trail display mostly pottery sherds but this one has what look to be examples of some type of game pieces or figurines.
If you have an interest in petroglyphs follow the rock lined dirt trail that leads south from the block of rooms.
A primitive trail leads over the cliff to a small valley where you will find numerous petroglyphs etched on some of the large boulders. The trail does require a bit of scrambling in places and may or may not have reptiles to watch out for.
Trail signs identify some of the images as clan symbols with drawings on the sign that correspond with the appropriate image on the rock.
After studying the rock art return to the main trail following the former route. There are no shortages of fragments of pottery to study at Homolovi II.
A large kiva has been reconstructed without its roof. Several trail signs explain the nature of the structure. For a good story written by Teddy Roosevelt about his visit to one of the Hopi mesas north of here where he witnessed the Snake Dance you can either search the internet or read about it at bartelby.com. There is also a YouTube video from the Library of Congress. The quality of the video isn't the greatest but you can still see the dancers carrying handfuls of snakes and even some with snakes clasped in their teeth. The video is best after ready Roosevelt's record.
