Salmon Ruins, New Mexico

Salmon Ruins is what is left of an Anasazi great house, found just west of Bloomfield, New Mexico on US Highway 64. The Salmon family homesteaded at this site in 1877, hence the name. Its structure is very similar to the Chaco Canyon great houses as well as the ruins at Aztec, New Mexico, just north of Farmington. Below is a map of the site. The great house is an E shape, with a major kiva(Tower Kiva) in the center and a great kiva in the plaza The back wall is on the East-West axis and is 400 feet long. The original construction was between about 1090 to 1095 AD. It had between 275 and 300 rooms and the highest portion was three stories tall.  Beginning about 1120 Middle San Juan people moved in. It was abandoned in about 1280 and deliberately burned.

The photo below  is taken from the south side of the Great Kiva looking north to the Tower Kiva in the center. This view encompasses virtually all of the great house.

The first photo below looks across the Great Kiva to the east end of the great house. The second photo shows the west end of the great house.

Below is a photo from the top of  Tower Kiva looking due east.

The next photo is of the east wall of Tower Kiva. Notice how the room walls abutting the kiva wall act like flying buttresses.

The photo below shows a small kiva. These small kivas probably belonged to individual families or clans.

The next three photos show some construction details. The stones in most cases were worked to fit in their location, particular the veneer stones. Rubble or unfitted stones were used in the interior of walls.

The Tower Kiva is shown in the two photos below. This kiva would have been entered through the roof. The ladder shown here is a modern addition.

The  small kivas shown below are two of the 20 small kivas found in this great house.

The photo below shows some construction detail of one wall. Notice in particular the small stones. The construction at Salmon is mortar and stone, not dry stone work. The mortar was basically local mud. The interior and exterior walls were plastered over, most of which is long gone.

In the photo below there is a long red and white appearing rock in the left-center of the photo. Above this rock a couple of courses of rock thee is some remnant of white and red, and also to the right upper center. This is all that is left of an Anasazi mural(?) that was on this wall until just a few years ago. Vandals ripped it off this wall. Very sad.

The rooms below show some of the construction techniques, with holes for vigas(timbers) and the wall dividing the room with its rubble filled core and exterior veneers.

Like with any house or building that has been around for awhile new occupants bring new ideas of how they want their house to be. In the first photo below the new owners have converted a square room to a round kiva. In the second photo they have also blocked off a door. Has anybody ever bought an older place and not done anything to it?

These are pot shards were inside the great house. We left them alone, taking only this picture.

The Salmon homestead buildings, built in 1897, are still on the property and are part of the museum. They are supposed to be some of the few remaining San Juan area homesteads.

The first three photos below are of the house. Notice how the outside walls seem to be trying to fall outward, distorting the two windows on the west end of the house.

The structure below was used as a root cellar.

Just east of the house are these buildings which were used as a bunkhouse for the ranch hands.

I've chased a lot of cattle but fortunately never had to stay in one of these.

Other posts by the author on Anasazi ruins include:

Aztec Ruins National Monument 7/19/2014
Betatakin Ruin 6/22/14
Hovenweep National Monument 5/26/14
Mesa Verde 5/25/12
Canyon de Chelly 11/16/11
Chaco Canyon 11/20/10

A note on the photographs: These photos are from three different trips to Salmon, Aztec and Chaco. The last trip was about 10 days ago and the lighting was fair to lousy, but I did get some things I had not paid close enough attention to before. Gnorbert accompanied us this time, and he would like to say thanks for looking.

Aztec Ruins National Monument

Aztec Ruins National Monument is located in the Four Corners area of New Mexico, north east of Farmington at a town called, appropriately enough, Aztec. These ruins are from the Ancient Puebloans also known as Anasazi. They were mistakenly called Aztec ruins by the early white settlers in the area. They are very reminiscent of the Chaco Canyon area and are thought to have been constructed and occupied by the same group of people. They were constructed beween 1085 and 1120 and abandoned by 1275. These ruins are near the banks of the Animas River at an elevation of about 5700 feet.

The ruins were excavated by an archaeologist, Earl Morris, from the American Natural History Museum, beginning in about 1916. The main excavation was of what is now called the West Ruin. This was a Chaco styled great house, very reminiscent of Chaco Canyon's Pueblo Bonito. I believe it was three stories high and had 400 rooms and 12 kivas. It, like Pueblo Bonito, was laid out in the form of a 'D'. A map of the Aztec ruins is shown below.

Three photos below show some of the West Ruin. The walls are up to three feet thick and were built by carefully building two walls and filling in between them with rocks and other rubble.

The first photo below shows a sort of matching v shaped deterioration of these walls. The next one shows a different view and the last one is a wider view of part of the west ruin. Notice the larger kiva in front of the ruin.

The photo below looks through two windows. These types of photos, looking through multiple doors or windows, are some of my favorites.

The next two photos show corner doors or windows. The construction experts tell us that this type of construction is weak and thus a no-no. These seem to go against that--they have been there about 900-1000 years.

The photo below seems to show a deliberate attempt on the part of the mason or architect to give some decoration to this exterior wall with the two sets of rows of dark rocks. The second photo shows the attention to detail around the end of a beam. The third photo shows careful dressing of the stones to produce a straight edge on a corner.

The three photos above show roof/ceiling details from original construction. The bottom one seems to have survived a fire.

The photo below shows an original mat in a window/door opening as seen from the opposite door.

The photo above is one of my favorites. It looks to me like these doors go on forever. They are doors going from room to room in the Great House. I tried to correct it for vertical/horizontal but gave up; as you can see which door lintel do you pick for the true horizontal? There are similar places at Chaco Canyon.

The photo below shows part of a kiva in front of the Great House.  It has not been restored.

The Chacoan people at times built large kivas, the exact purpose of which is not known. It is thought that the small kivas found in a Great House may have belonged to one clan or family group while the great kivas belonged to the community as a whole. They may have been used for community meetings as well as for religious rites/services where all of the community could attend. Speculation, of course. Earl Morris returned to Aztec in 1934 after his initial excavations and renovated a great kiva. The exterior of this renovation is shown in the photo below.

The reconstruction was based on what was found at the site.  Four pillars held up the roof. The pillars were made of alternating horizontal bands of wood and stone, placed on flat pieces of limestone.

Below are two photos of the interior taken facing each other. The diameter is 50 feet. The entrance is from either of the two antechambers. The windows around the walls enter into small rooms; no known other great kiva has such a feature. On the floor is a fire pit and two vaults. It is not known what the vaults were used for.

The photo below is of the great kiva at Chaco Canyon, know as Casa Rinconada. It has been excavated and stabilized but not reconstructed. It has a diameter of 64 feet. You can see the two vaults and the fire pit just like the ones at Aztec. The underground tunnel coming up in the center of the floor is apparently unique to Casa Rinconada and its purpose is unknown.

Finally, Aztec in the fall of the year is great with the cottonwoods in full autumn splendor. Here is an example.

For more on Anasazi ruins see the following posts by the author:Betatakin Ruin, 6/22/14
Hovenweep National Monument 5/26/14
Mesa Verde 5/25/12
Canyon de Chelly 11/16/11
Chaco Canyon 11/20/10