"Cloudy afternoon sky at Aztec Ruins" by U.S. National Park Service , public domain
![]() | Aztec RuinsNational Monument - New Mexico |
The Aztec Ruins National Monument preserves Ancestral Puebloan structures in northwestern New Mexico, United States, located close to the town of Aztec and northeast of Farmington, near the Animas River.
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Recreation Map of San Juan County in New Mexcio. Published by San Juan County.

Official visitor map of Aztec Ruins National Monument (NM) in New Mexico. Published by the National Park Service (NPS).

Map of the U.S. National Park System. Published by the National Park Service (NPS).

Map of the U.S. National Park System with Unified Regions. Published by the National Park Service (NPS).

Map of the U.S. National Heritage Areas. Published by the National Park Service (NPS).
brochures
https://www.nps.gov/azru/index.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Ruins_National_Monument
The Aztec Ruins National Monument preserves Ancestral Puebloan structures in northwestern New Mexico, United States, located close to the town of Aztec and northeast of Farmington, near the Animas River.
Pueblo people describe this site as part of their migration journey. Today you can follow their ancient passageways to a distant time. Explore a 900-year old ancestral Pueblo Great House of over 400 masonry rooms. Look up and see original timbers holding up the roof. Search for the fingerprints of ancient workers in the mortar. Listen for an echo of ritual drums in the reconstructed Great Kiva.
From Albuquerque/Bloomfield, NM: Follow Hwy 550 north into Aztec, turn left onto Highway 516, drive 3/4 mile, then turn right onto Ruins Road. Follow Ruins Road 1/2 mile to the monument. From Durango, CO: Follow Hwy 550 south into Aztec, where it will become 516. Turn right onto Ruins Road. Follow Ruins Road 1/2 mile to the monument. From Farmington, NM Follow Highway 516 east into Aztec. 1/4 mile past Lightplant Road, turn left onto Ruins Road. Follow Ruins Road 1/2 mile to the monument.
Aztec Ruins National Monument Visitor Center
A historic Visitor Center with museum exhibits and a 15 minute park film. The Visitor Center is open whenever the park is open, except during after hours outdoors programs (example: moon tours and solstice observations).
Enter Aztec Ruins National Monument at 725 Ruins Road. The Visitor Center will be ahead on your right, with vehicle parking on the right and oversize vehicle/RV parking on the left.
Great Kiva in Aztec West plaza
Reconstructed stone kiva amidst stone ruins
Great Kiva in Aztec West plaza
Great Kiva
Interior of a reconstructed great kiva
The reconstructed Great Kiva
Rainbow over the Great Kiva
Rainbow over the reconstructed Great Kiva
Rainbow over the reconstructed Great Kiva
Winter snow on Aztec West great house
Winter snow on stone ruins
Winter snow on Aztec West great house
T-shaped doorway in Aztec West
Original "T-shaped" doorway in stone ruins
Original "T-shaped" doorway in Aztec West
Original ancestral Pueblo roof structure
Three layers of original intact roof beams
Original ancestral Pueblo roof structures
A New Perspective
On my drive out west toward Grand Canyon this year, I had the chance to stop at a few Ancestral Puebloan sites – namely, Bandelier, Chaco Culture, and Aztec Ruins. Having worked and spent some time around these types of sites before, I felt like I was seeing and appreciating these special places on a much deeper level than even I realized was possible.
partial stone ruin walls form what was an interior corner of a room with doorway in corner.
New Mexico: Aztec Ruins National Monument
Near Aztec, New Mexico over 1,000 years ago, Ancestral Pueblo people constructed a large planned community that served their society for over two centuries. Aztec Ruins National Monument, which is part of the Chaco Culture National Historical Park World Heritage Site, preserves the remains of this well planned community, which is the largest Ancestral Puebloan community in the Animas River Valley.
Aerial view of Aztec ruins
NPS Geodiversity Atlas—Aztec Ruins National Monument, New Mexico
Each park-specific page in the NPS Geodiversity Atlas provides basic information on the significant geologic features and processes occurring in the park. Links to products from Baseline Geologic and Soil Resources Inventories provide access to maps and reports.
aerial view of park and surroundings
Increasing temperature seasonality may overwhelm shifts in soil moisture to favor shrub over grass dominance in Colorado Plateau drylands
Increasing variability of temperature favors a shift to shrublands over grasslands in arid southwestern landscapes. This effect is greater than the effect of increasing soil moisture, which favors a shift to grasslands over shrublands.
Grassland with scattered junipers and hills in the background.
2011 SCPN-NAU Student Projects
In spring 2011, the SCPN-NAU School of Communication collaboration began with a multimedia studies course focused on documenting park resources and resource projects. The class was taught by NAU professors Laura Camden and Peter Friederici.
2011 Student Projects
The Colorado Plateau
The Colorado Plateau is centered on the four corners area of the Southwest, and includes much of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico.
Hazy Fajada Butte, Chaco Culture National Monument
Monitoring Upland Vegetation and Soils on the Southern Colorado Plateau
Vegetation and soils are the foundation upon which all terrestrial ecosystems are built. Soils provide the medium for the storage and delivery of water and nutrients to plants, which in turn provide animal populations with both habitat and food.
Sampling grassland vegetation at a long-term monitoring plot at Wupatki National Monument
Southern Colorado Plateau Exotic Plant Inventory
Exotic plants take a heavy toll on biodiversity around the world. In the United States, exotic plant species invade tens of thousands of hectares every year, outcompeting native species and causing many to become threatened or endangered. Fire, flood, and other natural disturbance regimes can also be altered by exotic plants, broadly affecting land management.
Common salsify, an exotic plant
Modeling Past and Future Soil Moisture in Southern Colorado Plateau National Parks and Monuments
In this project, USGS and NPS scientists used the range of variation in historical climate data to provide context for assessing the relative impact of projected future climate on soil water availability. This report provides the results of modeled SWP generated for 11 ecosystems in nine Southern Colorado Plateau Network parks.
Extensive grassland at Wupatki National Monument
Early Custodians of Tumacácori
Early leadership at Tumacácori during the New Deal period of the 1930s made some of the most lasting and significant decisions in the park's history.
sepia-toned photo of Louis Caywood in ranger hat
Southern Colorado Plateau Bird Inventories
Birds are considered to be good indicators of environmental change. Inventories of bird populations not only provide valuable information that can help manage bird populations, but can also be helpful in managing other resources as well.
Yellow-rumped warbler
Southwest River Environments
In the arid Southwest, water means life, and prehistorically, rivers were the lifelines of the people.
The Colorado River flowing through a canyon
Vegetation Characterization and Mapping on the Southern Colorado Plateau
Vegetation mapping is a tool used by botanists, ecologists, and land managers to better understand the abundance, diversity, and distribution of different vegetation types across a landscape.
Vegetation plots used for the classification and mapping of El Malpais NM
Climate Change on the Southern Colorado Plateau
The combination of high. elevation and a semi-arid climate makes the Colorado Plateau particularly vulnerable to climate change. Climate models predict that over the next 100 years, the Southwest will become warmer and even more arid, with more extreme droughts than the region has experienced in the recent past.
One result of climate change may be more, larger floods, like this flash flood in Glen Canyon NRA
Southern Colorado Plateau Mammal Inventories
Mammal inventories help to close the gap in our knowledge and understanding of some taxonomic groups on the Colorado Plateau.
Coyote (Canis latrans)
Series: The New Deal at Tumacácori
The grounds of Tumacácori protect a map of treasures made by men and women during the New Deal era of the 1930's. Will you find them all?
black and white photo of young men and truck in walled courtyard garden
Series: National Park Service Geodiversity Atlas
The servicewide Geodiversity Atlas provides information on <a href="https://www.nps.gov/subjects/geology/geoheritage-conservation.htm">geoheritage</a> and <a href="https://www.nps.gov/subjects/geology/geodiversity.htm">geodiversity</a> resources and values all across the National Park System to support science-based management and education. The <a href="https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1088/index.htm">NPS Geologic Resources Division</a> and many parks work with National and International <a href="https://www.nps.gov/subjects/geology/park-geology.htm">geoconservation</a> communities to ensure that NPS abiotic resources are managed using the highest standards and best practices available.
park scene mountains
Series: Defining the Southwest
The Southwest has a special place in the American imagination – one filled with canyon lands, cacti, roadrunners, perpetual desert heat, a glaring sun, and the unfolding of history in places like Tombstone and Santa Fe. In the American mind, the Southwest is a place without boundaries – a land with its own style and its own pace – a land that ultimately defies a single definition.
Maize agriculture is one component of a general cultural definition of the Southwest.
Series: SCPN-NAU School of Communication Collaboration
The Southern Colorado Plateau Network (SCPN) of the National Park Service has been partnering with the Northern Arizona University (NAU) School of Communication since 2011 to develop student multimedia projects that highlight resources and activities in network parks. This collaboration gives NAU students hands-on experience in creating multimedia projects and provides network parks with products that can help to promote their unique resources and scientific or educational project work.
SCPN-NAU student projects
Two for the Price of One
Companion, assistant, confidant, ambassador, host, nurse, cook, secretary, editor, field technician, wildlife wrangler, diplomat, and social director are some of the many roles that people who marry into the NPS perform in support of their spouses and the NPS mission. Although the wives and daughters of park rangers were some of the earliest women rangers in the NPS, many more women served as “park wives” in the 1920s–1940s.
Three members of a family
What Did You Call Me?
Only 17 women park rangers are documented from 1918 to 1927. Perhaps another three or four are hinted at in the records. Even so, the total number was probably still only around 20. Most histories of the NPS, however, put the total number of women rangers much lower. The difference isn’t just a simple matter of math. It goes to the heart of the question “What makes a ranger?”
female ranger in uniform at a desk
Substitute Rangers
As the 1940s dawned, the United States was still dealing with the economic woes of the Great Depression and trying not to get drawn in WWII. Even as it continued to manage New Deal Program work in national and state parks, the NPS remained understaffed as a government bureau. The emergency relief workers and about 15 percent of NPS staff enlisted or were drafted during the first couple of years of WWII.
Winifred Tada, 1940. (Courtesy of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin)
Changing Patterns of Water Availability May Change Vegetation Composition in US National Parks
Across the US, changes in water availability are altering which plants grow where. These changes are evident at a broad scale. But not all areas experience the same climate in the same way, even within the boundaries of a single national park. A new dataset gives park managers a valuable tool for understanding why vegetation has changed and how it might change in the future under different climate-change scenarios.
Green, orange, and dead grey junipers in red soil, mountains in background
Water Resources on the Colorado Plateau
Describes the origin, uses, threats to, and conservation of water on the Colorado Plateau.
Dark green body of water winding through red rock formations with brilliant sun overhead.
The Resource Stewardship Scout Ranger Program Brings BSA Scouts and National Parks Together
To connect more youth to their local communities, NPS created the Resource Stewardship Scout Ranger Program in partnership with the Boy Scouts of America, which welcomes boys, girls, and young adults to participate. Through this program, BSA Scouts and Cub Scouts can earn award certificates and may also receive a patch. Learn more in this article.
William Kai, a Cub Scout, holds up his Resource Stewardship Scout Ranger Certificate Award
Ranger Roll Call, 1930-1939
Few women worked in uniformed positions in the 1930s but those who did weren't only ranger-checkers or ranger-naturalists. Jobs as guides, historians, archeologists, and in museums opened to more women.
Seven women in Park Service uniforms stand in line inside a cave.
Ranger Roll Call, 1940-1949
Only a small number of women held temporary ranger positions in national parks during World War II. Carlsbad Caverns National Park, national monuments in the Southwest, and historical sites in the East continued to employ more women. Although a few women veterans benefitted from post-war veteran hiring programs, most veterans were men and permanent positions became even more difficult for women to get.
Catherine Byrnes and Barbara Dickinson stand outside modeling the NPS uniform.
Ranger Roll Call, 1950-1959
In the 1950s, women in uniform continue to work as guides, historians, and archeologists. Few women had permanent positions. A handful of women began to get seasonal ranger-naturalists positions at large national parks for the first time in two decades.
Ann Livesay in her NPS uniform standing in front of a low wall at the edge of the Grand Canyon.
National Parks in the History of Science: Dendrochronology (Video)
Scientists around the world use tree rings to understand past climates, ecosystems, and cultures. The study of tree rings to understand the past is called dendrochronology. This field of science began in several national parks in the Southwest: Mesa Verde, Aztec Ruins, Chaco Culture, and others.
a black and white photo of tree rings close up
Series: Parks in Science History
Parks in Science History is a series of articles and videos made in cooperation with graduate students from various universities. They highlight the roles that national parks have played in the history of science and, therefore, the world's intellectual heritage.
A woman looking through binoculars
Old Spanish Trail at Aztec Ruins Waysides
Audio descriptions and transcripts for two waysides at the Old Spanish Trail Retracement at Aztec Ruins National Monument
Guide to the Thomas J. Allen Photograph Collection
Finding aid for the Thomas J. Allen Photographs in the NPS History Collection.