Kinishba Ruins

Kinishba Ruins
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. National Historic Landmark District
Kinishba Ruins
Show map of Arizona Show map of the United States
Location	Gila County, Arizona, USA
Nearest city	Canyon Day, Arizona
Coordinates	33°48′53″N 110°03′16″W / 33.81472°N 110.05444°W / 33.81472; -110.05444
Architect	Vernacular
Architectural style	Ancestral Pueblo
NRHP reference No.	66000180
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	October 15, 1966[1]
Designated NHLD	July 19, 1964[2]

Kinishba Ruins is a 600-room Mogollon great house archaeological site in eastern Arizona and is administered by the White Mountain Apache Tribe. It is located on the present-day Fort Apache Indian Reservation, near the Apache community of Canyon Day. As it demonstrates a combination of both Mogollon and Ancestral Puebloan cultural traits, archaeologists consider it part of the historical lineage of both the Hopi and Zuni cultures.^[3] It is designated as a National Historic Landmark.

Kinishba's elevation is about 5,000 feet (1,500 m). It lies above a pine-fringed alluvial valley, west of Fort Apache, near the White Mountain Apache Tribal community of Canyon Day. Long known to the Apache people of the region and alleged to have been visited by Conquistadors, the site was first written about in English in 1892, when pioneering archaeologist Adolph Bandelier described the ruins. In 1964, the NPS designated the site as a National Historic Landmark. It had long been abandoned and fallen into disrepair. The ruins received limited cleanup and restoration in 2005–2007.^[3]

Scholars believe that Kinishba may have been the pueblo Chiciticale referred to in narratives of the 1540–41 Spanish expedition led by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado.