Besh-Ba-Gowah Museum - A educational and amazing stop in Globe,AZ!

We live in beautiful Arizona and it feels like such a waste to know that there are so many unique and interesting places to explore and not go visit them! My children are at the age where they are able to hike with us for an hour or two and not get tired, and they have a growing love for adventure as well so we've been taking advantage of the lower number of tourists and limited capacity at various destinations in our home state. 

I have been working with the state parks department to visit some of the different parks in our state, and along the way we've been stopping off at other attractions. I plan on sharing many of these wonderful locations with all of you, if you are local to Arizona and need a weekend getaway or day trip you should check out some of the places we've stopped or if you are outside AZ and everything re-opens again you should stop on your next trip through our state. This post is in no way sponsored or endorsed by the park, this is a destination we decided to check out on our own and enjoyed enough to share with you.

Today I wanted to share a spot in Globe,Arizona that I found online prior to taking our trip out to Safford. The destination is called the Besh-Ba-Gowah Archaeological Park & Museum. It is the location of a prehistoric Salado masonry pueblo that sits atop of ridge overlooking the Pinal Creek, it is located on two acres of land and it is home to an actual prehistoric ruin site that has been partially re-constructed. It is closed on the weekend so we decided to see it on our way back home during the week. Finding it was quite interesting and was a mini adventure all on it's own, it is tucked away inside of the town itself so you'll drive through two small neighborhood streets to reach your destination that is tucked away next to the local community center. 

Due to covid precautions the museum currently has limited the capacity of people allowed inside of the indoor museum to allow everyone to have their space from the other visitors. There is normally a fee to visit, however it is currently being waved. When we arrived there were only three other cars, two of which were leaving so we showed up at the perfect time. The first stop was inside of the museum, everything featured in the building was excavated inside of the ruins themselves. 

The museum had dozens of arrow heads, bows, pots, jewelry beads and more that were fascinating to see. They also provided quite a bit of information on each item, had a miniature re-construction of how everything would have looked when it was first built and they offered a movie for anyone wanting to watch it. The gift shop was packed with local goodies all of which were fun and unique such as feathers with paintings on them, scorpions in magnets, local honey and more. After seeing what they had to offer inside and using the bathroom we went outside to begin exploring the ruins. 

There are no tour guides, everything is set up so you are able to explore on your own. You'll find many signs along the way describing different rooms of the pueblo and offering insight on what life was like during that time period. I've visited ruin sites before, however this one ranks as one of my favorite. The site is huge, there is a lot of space to walk around in and they incorporated some beautiful dessert life along the way.

In the back of the ruins is a large two story building, we were excited to find that you were able to enter the building. We were able to walk through the two larger rooms which lead out to the other side of the building where you'll find another path to walk along. There were several spots along the way that were perfect for taking a few photos, they even have a bench places out in front of an interesting looking cactus cluster so you can take a nice family photo. After visiting if the kids still have a lot of energy there is a small park right behind the center where the kids can run around a bit. We didn't see any close places to stop for a bite to eat so you'd have to head into the town of Globe to locate a restaurant. 

We had a lovely time when visiting Besh-Ba-Gowah, it was educational and it is always amazing to see how people lived during different times in history. I also loved that they had a number of bird feeders so you had a chance to see some of the local birds. If you are ever near the area or traveling through I recommend stopping by their facility, you can take your time or if you are in a hurry you could see everything in 30-45 minutes.