The word Salado comes from the Spanish name Rio Salado, meaning Salt River and this culture was one centered along the Salt River in the Tonto Basin, which is north of the Superstition Mountains in an area located about 80 miles east of Phoenix, Arizona.

Just as the development of the local Salado culture in the Tonto Basin and the regional Salado Phenomenon remain a mystery, so too do the reasons for the disappearance of the Salado iconography and the Salado way of life in the Southwest.

The Salado stone stackers settled this spacious river basin about 1150 CE and continued to dwell here until about 1450 CE.

However, most of the bulk of the Salado settlement that was built along the Salt River basin is now beneath the man made Theodore Roosevelt lake.

Nevertheless, not all of these stone stackers choose to live in the river basin along the Salt River, as some would leave the crowded valley plain, climb to the surrounding high ground and there begin working the stones to create a home in which to live.

Heading northeast from Phoenix, Arizona, in south central Arizona is state highway 87 which rises into the Four Peaks Wilderness as it climbs to a mile in elevation towards and beyond Payton, Arizona. To the east is the Salome Wilderness and above and around this wilderness is the Tonto National Forest. To the distant south is the Superstition Wilderness but just before and below this mountain range is the Salt River which flows down from all of these wilderness areas that surround it.

Instead of towards the mountains, the path to these stone stacker ruins leads me in a different direction. This path follows the road into the Tonto Basin far from the surrounding mountains rising all about me in the north.

The Salado people were farmers who used simple irrigation techniques to water their crops of maize, beans, pumpkins, amaranth, and cotton. These people unted local game and gathered buds, leaves, and roots to supplement their diet. Too, they traded with other cultures, as indicated by archaeological finds of seashells from the Gulf of California and macaw feathers from Mexico.

These stone stackers are distinguished from other cultures partly because they lived in walled adobe compounds, buried their dead instead of using cremation, and created distinctive multicolored pottery, called the Salado Polychrome.