Aztec Ruins National Monument

The Aztec Ruins National Monument preserves ancestral Pueblo structures in north-western New Mexico, United States, located close to the town of Aztec and northeast of Farmington, near the Animas River. Salmon Ruins and Heritage Park, with more ancestral Pueblo structures, lies a short distance to the south, just west of Bloomfield near the San Juan River. The buildings date back to the 11th to 13th centuries, and the misnomer attributing them to the Aztec civilization can be traced back to early American settlers in the mid-19th century. The actual construction was by the ancestral Puebloans, the Anasazi. The site was declared "Aztec Ruin National Monument" on January 24, 1923, and with a boundary change it was renamed "Ruins" on July...