At other locations, they built canals of more than 50 feet in width. In some locations – for example, at Pueblo Grande, near Phoenix – they built main canals which spanned 30 feet in width and reached 10 feet in depth, with 10-foot high embankments, according to Andrews and Bostwick. The workmen used the excavated soils to build embankments along the canal sides. In backbreaking labor, Hohokam workmen used digging sticks, stone hoes, stone axes and wicker baskets to excavate the canals. They knew the value of water in the desert. In some areas, they reduced water losses by excavating deep, narrow channels to reduce surface exposure and evaporation under the sun’s heat and by plastering canal bottoms to minimize absorption by loose soils. (Validating the work of their prehistoric predecessors, modern engineers, using sophisticated surveying instruments, frequently found themselves following the ancient Hohokam routes while building the canal networks of today’s Phoenix and Tucson.) The Hohokam regulated water levels by matching canal widths and depths to flow volumes. Hohokam engineers regulated water flow velocities (and erosion and silting) by aligning the canals – apparently using rudimentary surveying devices – with gentle but consistent downhill grades of perhaps one to five feet in a mile. They used networks of distribution ditches and, finally, laterals to conduct water to their fields and, sometimes, to village cisterns or reservoirs.

They used log-and-brush headgates to throttle and direct the flow of water within the main channels. In developing what ScienceDaily Magazine (February 2, 2001) called 'by far the most advanced canal irrigation system in the New World,' the Hohokam used partial dams, or weirs, made of log and brush to divert water from permanently flowing rivers into their main irrigation channels. They even devised specially designed structures and techniques for sustaining crops and communities on desert 'outwash slopes,' or alluvial fans, far from springs or permanently flowing water. Bostwick in their book Desert Farmers at the River’s Edge: The Hohokam and Pueblo Grande.' The Hohokam constructed labyrinthine canal systems to irrigate their fields and serve their villages along the banks of flowing rivers. The Hohokam engineered and built 'the largest prehistoric irrigation system in North America,' according to John P. While the Mogollon created a rich and distinctive legacy of images on stone and clay, the Hohokam produced extensive systems for irrigation, reached high levels of innovative craftsmanship, and responded dramatically to Mesoamerican influences. In a broad sense, the Hohokam and Mogollon followed parallel cultural pathways, but each also left a cultural signature.

Like the Mogollon, they suffered unexplained cultural fragmentation and dislocation in the 15th century. During the last third of their history, they marched to the quickening beat of a puzzling change, concentrating in pithouses and large surface structures within towns with populations of several hundred to more than a thousand. During the first two thirds of their history, the Hohokam moved to the unhurried rhythms of their heritage, living in shallow pithouse lodges within villages which increased slowly in size and population over time. Like the Mogollon, the Hohokam left remnants of settled communities, fields and clay vessels to mark their emergence from their predominantly nomadic hunting and gathering traditions. The Hohokam people – desert farmers who occupied the heart of Arizona and the northern part of Mexico’s Sonora from early in the first millennium to nearly the middle of the second millennium – followed a cultural development similar to that of their Mogollon neighbors to the east.

Hohokam political structure