As with most sites in the Agua Fria National Monument, Pueblo La Plata is difficult to photograph. Exposed walls are reduced to only a few feet of height in most places, and brush and grass has collected inside the ruins, restricting visibility. (The brush grows preferentially inside the ruins because the walls give them some protection from high winds and, more importantly, from grazing cattle. Thus, spotting little islands of brush from a distance can be a good clue to the presence of ruins.) In any case, although you can get a good feeling for the size and complexity of the site as you walk around it, it is difficult to capture the same sense of scale in a ground-level photograph. To get above the brush, I occasionally employ my "pole-cam," which consists of a camera mounted on the end of a collapsible sixteen-foot pole. For more challenging situations, I also use a balloon-mounted camera called "Balloon-Cam" (see photo 10, and the balloon-cam mosaic below).

Photos 2 and 3 were taken using the pole-cam. You can see my vehicle (barely) in the parking area in the center of Photo 2. Photo 3 is looking towards the west, out along a peninsula that is bordered on the right (north) by Silver Creek and on the left (south) by an unnamed wash. If you walk out to the tip of the mesa in that direction, you will find Silver Creek Fort, a man-made rock wall that divides the tip of the peninsula from the rest of the mesa.

Photo 6 shows a close-up of the construction technique used in the walls. Note that the stones are used as they are found (field-stones) with no attempt to modify them to fit, except perhaps for breaking exceptionally large pieces into more manageable sizes or smoothing off inconvenient nubs. Note also the strawless mud mortar used to stabilize the walls, and the extent to which is has decayed over time. In cliff dwellings, which are protected from rain, it is common to see such walls covered over in a plaster of mud half an inch to an inch thick. If that technique was used here, the covering has long since washed away.

One of the ways archeologists can tell that a structure was built over time rather than all at once is through features like the one shown in Photo 7. The vertical joint between wall sections (near the right) clearly indicates that this was once an outside wall, with a new section subsequently added on. Another indication that a structure was built in stages is a sharp difference in construction techniques or materials. The wall sections on the left and right sides of Photo 8 are constructed from different kinds of rock.

Photo 9 shows a fairly typical section of ground around the ruin. The red-brown pot sherds are "plainware" of local manufacture, while the decorated piece was undoubtedly imported. Also present are obsidian stone chips (lithics), left over from tool-making, which probably originated at Government Mountain near Flagstaff.

Photo 10 (above) shows the semi-famous Balloon Camera being readied for launch over Pueblo La Plata. The balloon is too large to be conveniently carried inside a vehicle, and must be inflated on site. The tank with the pink top contains the helium--and yes, it is heavy. The fishing rod and reel on the ground next to the tank are used to hoist and retrieve the balloon. The camera itself dangles from the balloon's bottom right corner.

The Balloon Cam must be operated in calm weather, as even the slightest wind results in excessive camera motion and blurry images. The best conditions are usually found in the early morning. Photo 10 was taken at the crack of dawn on a very chilly December morning.

The image below is a composite of several images taken using the Balloon Cam. The images do not quite line up in places, because the balloon cam had to be moved around to photograph the entire site. Click on the image below for a larger photo.

Pueblo La Plata is the one site in the Agua Fria National Monument the location of which is published by the BLM. To get there, take the Bloody Basin Road exit from I-17, and head east. The blacktop will change almost immediately to a well-maintained dirt road, where you will find a sign marking the entrance to the Monument and a kiosk with a map. A high-clearance vehicle is recommended, but if it hasn't rained recently almost any vehicle will do.

Measuring from the kiosk, go south and east on Bloody Basin Road. It will run parallel to the highway for a while, wind down into a valley, cross a ford at the Agua Fria River at the 4.9 mile mark, and climb back up on top of Perry Mesa. At the 8.9 mile mark, turn left onto an unmarked (and much more poorly maintained) dirt road. For this you will definitely need a high clearance vehicle. This road is a little more than a mile long, passes to the right of some large piles of dirt that were bulldozed up during the excavation of a stock pond, and ends at a parking area near a sign marking the trail to Pueblo La Plata (see Photo 1). The walk from there to the ruin is a few hundred yards. For those with a GPS, the coordinates of Pueblo La Plata are 34^o 15' 06"N, 112^o 02' 00"W.