The Hopi Indians used irrigation to water their crops. They dug long ditches from rivers for water to travel from. This helped them grow crops like corn, squash, and beans. They used the clay from the land to build their adobe style homes, which were large and housed many families.

One of the most important foods they grew was maize (corn). They grew 24 different types of corn. They also grew beans, squash, melons, pumpkins and fruit. For meat, they often ate wild turkey.

ad 200–1450), and the Hohokam (c. ad 200–1400). These groups lived in permanent and semipermanent settlements that they sometimes built near (or even on) sheltering cliffs; developed various forms of irrigation; grew crops of corn (maize), beans, and squash; and had complex social and ritual habits.

Many distinct Native American groups populated the southwest region of the current United States, starting in about 7000 BCE. The Ancestral Pueblos—the Anasazi, Mogollon, and Hohokam—began farming in the region as early as 2000 BCE, producing an abundance of corn.

They hunted deer, big horn sheep, pronghorns, and bison. The Southwest Indians raised cattle and sheep. These are some traditional foods from the Southwest Indians. Traditional crops included healthy food such as corn, root plants, beans, and squash.

This culture area is contiguous with the Far West Culture, the Plains Culture (to the northeast) and the southern part of the Eastern Woodland Culture. The Southwest’s climate is generally hot and arid. Much of the land is desert dotted with cacti and other water-miser plants.

Low annual precipitation, clear skies, and year-round warm climate over much of the Southwest are due in large part to a quasi-permanent subtropical high-pressure ridge over the region. The effects of ENSO and PDO can amplify each other, resulting in increased annual variability in precipitation over the Southwest.

Here are a few of our highlights from the new Rough Guide to Southwest USA.

• Canyon de Chelly.
• The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad.
• Acoma Pueblo.
• Toroweap Overlook.
• Saguaro National Park.
• White Sands National Monument.
• Monument Valley.
• Mesa Verde.

The geography of the region is mainly made up of four features: the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan Deserts, and the Colorado Plateau; although there are other geographical features as well, such as a portion of the Great Basin Desert.

The most prominent landform in the Southwest is the Rocky Mountains. Other important landforms are the Coastal Plain–a low, flat area bordering the Gulf of Mexico–and the Great Plains–a low, flat, wheat-growing area, which runs all the way up into Canada.

• Arches National Park. Erosion AND preservation at its finest examples, Arches National Park is an essential stop on any epic American southwest road trip.
• Canyonlands National Park.
• Moab, Utah.
• Monument Valley.
• Grand Canyon.
• Horseshoe Bend.
• Zion National Park.
• Bryce Canyon National Park.

The upper part and the lower part of Southeast region have very different landforms. The states in the upper part of the region have rolling hills, rich river valleys and high flat areas called plateaus. The states in the lower part of the region have beaches, swamps, and wetlands.