Palatki Heritage Site: Red House and the Grotto

Tucked into an alcove of red cliff northwest of town stands Palatki, a name the Smithsonian archaeologist Jesse Walter Fewkes gave the site in the late eighteen hundreds. It is Hopi for red house. The Sinagua built these masonry rooms into the rock between about eleven hundred and fourteen hundred, two clusters of dwellings that likely sheltered two related families.

But the stone walls are only part of the story. A short walk away, a deep sheltered grotto holds one of the richest rock art panels in Arizona, paintings that an archaeologist estimated span some six thousand years, from ancient Archaic hunters through the Sinagua and on to the Yavapai and Apache who came later. Red ochre figures crowd the protected stone, preserved by the overhang above them.

In the early twentieth century a homesteader named Charles Willard bought the land, lived at first in a cave among the paintings, then built a ranch house that today serves as the visitor center. The Forest Service now protects Palatki, and to walk among its walls and paintings you must reserve a place in a small guided tour.