A Hohokam Pithouse Replica, "Three Sisters" Crops, and Matates - OH MY!
Troop 299, Oro Valley Catalina Council, Scouting America Planting Native Trees at tables with Joyce Rychener, August 2025
In August, Troop 299, Oro Valley Catalina Council, Scouting America spent a weekend planting native trees, digging a compost bin, and learning about plants and gardening techniques from your local expert and OVHS volunteer, Joyce Rychener.
In October a group of volunteers with the United Way Days of Caring got busy in the cactus garden, sanding a gate for new paint to be applied, turning compost, prepping an area planned for a new rose garden, trimming back plants, and spreading lots of wood chips – all things needed to make our garden flourish!
School Field Trip with Paul Canez Discussing Cacti, October 2025
Picking Carrots with Joyce Rychener
In late October, our naturalist, Paul Canez, took a group of seven children and their parents on an educational tour of the Sonoran Desert. The tour started at Honey Bee Canyon, where they explored the flora and fauna within the park. They then traveled the short distance to Steam Pump Ranch to the Heritage Garden, where the children explored a replica of a Hohokam home, learned how to use a metate to grind corn, and picked carrots, tomatoes, squash, and other vegetables.
A big treat was that our Heritage Garden Director, Joyce Rychener, helped them find a unique Tohono O’odham watermelon that had been growing all summer. The boys and girls were able to experience its amazing taste and smell firsthand.
It was a truly memorable experience for the children as well as for their families.
Thanks to Oro Valley Home Depot, our new tool shed is complete—supplies, labor, and all! With fresh paint and a sturdy foundation, our tools are now safe from the blazing sun, and the garden looks better than ever.
So needed and so appreciated!
Shed in Heritage Garden September 2025 with Plants
Special Thanks To:
Want to Get Involved?
Troop 299, Oro Valley Catalina Council Scouting America Planting Native Trees at Steam Pump Ranch August 2025
United Way Days of Caring at Heritage Rose Garden_October 2025
Check out our volunteer page for other opportunities—whether you come solo, bring a friend, or join as a group (like Troop 299 and United Way did), you’re always welcome.
On February 18, 2009, the Town of Oro Valley Resolution (R)09-10 authorized the Oro Valley Historical Society to oversee planting, maintenance and touring of the garden. The garden site location was determined according to the Master Plan for Steam Pump Ranch 2005.
In 2011 the Tohono O’odham Nation generously funded the Heritage Garden project. Their support made it possible to install protective fencing to keep wildlife out, develop curriculum for local schools, and purchase essential garden supplies.
In 2020 – Bryan Family Trust provided funding for raised beds, tanks, soil, seeds, educational program lesson plans.
In 2025 Home Depot in Oro Valley continued this spirit of support by replacing the fencing and providing materials to build a shed – keeping our tools safely stored and sheltered from the elements.
The Heritage Garden serves as a living classroom is a center for education and preserves traditional Native American crops cultivated in this region for centuries, highlighting and celebrating our local cultural heritage.
Based on the “three sisters”: Tohono O’odham 60-day corn, tepary beans, and Tohono O’odham squash – the garden may at times also feature sunflowers, heirloom melons, tomatillos, peppers, squash, beans, okra, onions, cucumbers, herbs, amaranth, tobacco, and chiles. These heat, drought, and alkaline-tolerant plants reflect the agricultural knowledge of the desert’s first farmers.
Corn in different forms
The garden also includes Hohokam grinding mortars of bedrock that were donated to the Oro Valley Historical Society by Henry K. Zipf, great grandson of George Pusch.
Looking to purchase desert seeds? Learn more about Native Seeds/SEARCH who conserves and shares the seeds of the people of the desert Southwest and Mexico.
Come to the Heritage Garden at Steam Pump Ranch to see a replica of a Hohokam-style pit house based on one discovered in Honey Bee Village that was probably twice the size of our model!
Pit House Replica at Steam Pump Ranch in the Heritage Garden
In this Hohokam Pithouse video, Allen Denoyer, a Preservation Archaeologist with Archaeology Southwest, explains how these houses were made by the Hohokam, ancestors of Tohono O’odham in Southern Arizona. Download a rough transcript of this video provided by Pima Community College.
The replica is based on houses that were discovered during excavations at Honeybee Village in the Rancho Vistoso area. See this replica in the Heritage Garden at Steam Pump Ranch in Oro Valley, Arizona.
Experience experimental Archaeology and Hands-On Archaeology of Hohokam Pithouses presented by Archaeology Southwest and its advisory team on Second Saturdays at Steam Pump Ranch!
Honey Bee Village is one of the largest Hohokam villages in the northern Tucson Basin. Lying near the base of Pusch Ridge in the Rancho Vistoso development, it was occupied from about A.D. 750 to A.D. 1300. This prehistoric village covers about 75 acres. The core area, consisting of approximately 12 acres, contains a ball court for social gatherings, a large walled compound, and a series of trash mounds containing artifacts that represent nearly 500 years of occupation. An estimated 150-200 pit house structures may exist at the village.
The nearby Sleeping Snake Village also contained a ball court and a large number of pithouses.
Watch excavations of AD 1000 Hohokam homes and discover how this agricultural society lived through the items and structures they left behind. In this video, Henry Wallace, Senior Research Archaeologist with Desert Archaeology, Inc., provides information about the Hohokam people and their life at Honey Bee Canyon, and the excavation of their village
Preservation of the core area of one of these Hohokam villages is essential to gaining a better understanding of the thousands of years of history in Oro Valley. Archaeological excavations were conducted at the site in 1988.
Go to our video library to find more historic information.
