While in Farmington we visited the Aztec Ruins. They are NOT really Aztec; when settlers discovered the site in the late 1800s they thought it was an Aztec site and named it. The nearby town is also called Aztec so the name stuck. This is another example of another ancient Puebloan great house, similar to the Chaco Canyon great houses.

This great house was extensively excavated and the large kiva reconstructed in the 1920s-1930s by Lewis Morgan, who grew up in the area and became an archeologist. He took great care to not disturb items found inside the structures and there are many examples of pottery, weaving, etc. that were found. He reconstructed the kiva using modern technology but keeping it as close to the original as he could, including the colors based on remnants that he found. Using modern technology (for the 1920s) it took over 7 months to build the kiva.

One item unique to this site is that the outside walls had bands of dark green stones where the rest of the stones are light gray. It is not known why this was done.

Here are some pictures we took at the site: