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Aztec Ruins National Monument is a ruined Ancestral Puebloan Great House in New Mexico. It’s included in the UNESCO World Heritage listing for Chaco Culture National Historical Park.
General Info
Aztec Ruins became a fee-free park on May 1, 2018, and is still fee-free as of April 2024. It’s open daily throughout the year and is located about 12 miles from Farmington, New Mexico. It can be visited in under an hour.
Visitor Center
The first place we visited was the visitor center, which was once the home of archaeologist Earl Morris. There are several artifacts on display as well as a short 15 minute film about the site. It’s also a good idea to ask for a trail guide to help navigate the short ½ mile self-guided walk through the Aztec West ruins.
Great Kiva
The self-guided walk begins at a reconstruction of a Great Kiva. The kiva was excavated by Earl Morris in 1921, and he reconstructed it 13 years later. It’s the oldest and largest reconstruction of a kiva.
The Great Kiva was used for ceremonies and as a community center. Walking inside of it lets you appreciate how large it was.
Aztec West
Next, the walk continues through the plaza past another kiva and alongside the ruins. You can begin to appreciate the architecture of the Great House and see some of the 400 rooms.
Aztec Ruins date back to between the 11th and 13th centuries. Early settlers erroneously believed they were built by the Aztec culture but the name stuck.
The walk continues into some of the rooms. If you look carefully, you can see original wooden beams used to support the roof as well as original mortar between the bricks.
After exiting the ruins, the trail continues to a circular structure called the Hubbard Tri-wall Site, which has been backfilled for better preservation. It then continues back alongside the ruins where you can see more original wooden logs.
Finally, the trail climbs up to the top of the ruins where you can get a panoramic view of the site.
Conclusion
Overall, it’s a very impressive site and a good place to visit if you can’t make it to the less-accessible Chaco Culture National Historical Park. Also, there are other ruins at the site that are closed to the public, and it will be interesting to see if one day they’ll be available to visit.
