National Parks 2023: Aztec Ruins NM

It’s time for the annual National Parks Club! Find out information about participating shops, Vacay Bingo, the KAL, and more here.

Where is it located?

The Aztec Ruins National Monument is located in northwestern New Mexico, on the western bank of the Animas River in Aztec, New Mexico, about 12 miles northeast of Farmington.

Whose land does it reside upon?

Navajos and Jicarilla Apaches live on reservations in northwestern New Mexico, and 19 other Native American groups reside elsewhere in this state.

When was it established?

January 24, 1923

About this park:

The Aztec Ruins National Monument in northwestern New Mexico, USA, consists of preserved structures constructed by the Pueblo Indians.

This is kind of annoying and colonizerish, but early settlers mistakenly thought that people from the Aztec Empire in Mexico created these striking buildings. They named the site “Aztec,” a misnomer that persisted even after it became clear that the builders were the ancestors of many Southwestern tribes. The people who built at Aztec and other places throughout the Southwest were called “Anasazi” for many years. Archeologists had adopted that word from the Navajo language, which they understood to mean “ancient ones,” and then popularized its use. Most Pueblo people today prefer that we use the term “Ancestral Puebloans” to refer to their ancestors.

Aztec Ruins, built and used over a 200-year period, is the largest Ancestral Pueblo community in the Animas River valley. Concentrated on and below a terrace overlooking the Animas River, the people at Aztec built several multi-story buildings called “great houses” and many smaller structures. Associated with each great house was a “great kiva”—a large circular chamber used for ceremonies. Nearby are three unusual “tri-wall” structures—above ground kivas encircled by three concentric walls. In addition, they modified the landscape with dozens of linear swales called “roads,” earthen berms, and platforms.

The construction at Aztec shows a strong influence from Chaco Canyon, the site of a major Ancestral Pueblo community to the south. Aztec may have been an outlying community of Chaco, a sort of ancillary place connected to the center to distribute food and goods to the surrounding population. It may have also been a center in its own right as Chaco’s influence waned after 1100.