Round Trip Distance: 0.8 miles
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 4037 - 4101 feet
Cellphone: 0-3 bars
Time: 3 hrs. 45 mins.
Trailhead: FR 481
Fee: none
Attractions: pueblo ruins
The Hackberry Wash Ruins area located in the Tonto National Forest, bordering on the Agua Fria National Monument, northeast of Black Canyon City, Arizona. This post covers 2 rubble pile ruins that are near each other along Forest Road 481.
To get there take I-17 Exit 259 and follow the Bloody Basin Road for 11.3 miles. Turn right at that point onto Agua Fria 9014.
Continue along 9014 for 1.8 miles and turn left onto FR 481.
This is one of the better roads in the area that is normally accessible by a 2WD vehicle with a moderate amount of ground clearance and a careful driver.
We had the waypoints for some other ruins which turned out to be fictitious so we were driving along and stopping at each one to see what was there. As it turned out there were just the 2 ruins that we are posting here. A person could drive on to the fork with FR 588 and then hike over to Ruin 1 and then cross country to Ruin 2 but we ended up doing it in two stops by first visiting Ruin 2 by following a cow trail that led the way from FR 481.
Hackberry Wash Ruin 2 has the rubble pile outlines of about 20 rooms.
From a few sections of visible walls it looks like they may have used dry stack construction without any mortar.
The pottery looks to be about the same as that found at all the other ruins. It seems surprising for an area with 200 years of habitation that there aren't any examples of pottery from other regions that may have come about through trading.
Hackberry Wash Ruin 1 appears to be a bit smaller in size.
One interesting thing that we saw here were some copper ore samples blended with what we're guessing is malachite.
