Salmon Ruins

Salmon Ruins is a major Chacoan and Pueblo site on the San Juan River in northwestern New Mexico, built around 1090 CE by migrants from Chaco Canyon. Originally a three-story great house of roughly 275 to 300 rooms, it appears to have served chiefly as a residential center, with family room suites, a large plaza, a great kiva, and a tower kiva. After about 1125, local Middle San Juan Puebloans continued to occupy and alter the settlement until the 1280s, when much of it was intentionally burned during abandonment. Extensive excavations after 1970 recovered more than 1.5 million artifacts and samples.

Lee Acres, New Mexico · United States