Puebloan Ruins Around Bloomfield, New Mexico

 

Aztec Ruins National Monument

From the late 1000s to the late 1200s, people known as ancestral Puebloans planned and built this settlement near modern day Aztec, New Mexico. The first dwellers were influenced by Chacoan architecture, ceramics and ceremonial life. It became a National Monument in 1923 and a World Heritage Site in 1987.

These structures were not built by the Aztecs. This name comes from the Spanish maps of the 1800s.

The Great Kiva was a central gathering place for ceremonies and community events.

This Great Kiva was rebuilt on the original foundation in 1934 to show us how they were constructed.

This was rebuilt using modern day construction. The original wood pillars sat on large stone disks.

Aztec Ruins is one of the more intact Puebloan settlements.

The thick tapering walls of the great house had a core of roughly shaped stones and mud mortar between sandstone masonry exteriors.

This is one of the taller doorways.

To travel between rooms, they passed through short doorways. This series of rooms is still roofed with 900-year-old beams.

The complex covers a two-acre site.

The three-story buildings had over 400 rooms and many kivas.

The Visitor Center/Museum were directly in front of these ruins.

Salmon Ruins

Only three miles from "home", the Salmon Ruins are preserved, owned and operated by the San Juan County Museum Association.

Beginning in the late 11th century, people from Chaco Canyon came to the banks of the San Juan River to build the great house community now referred to as the Salmon Ruins.

The veneer of the walls is similar to the Chaco Canyon Great Houses, with noted differences. The vertical mortar had small flat stones as well as the horizontal.

This was called an elevated great kiva because it sat above the great house.

Adjacent to the Salmon Ruins is the homestead of George Salmon. He purchased this land and preserved the ruins within his ranchland. This is the bunkhouse.

George Salmon's main house.