As I noted in my previous blog post, the Chaco people did not live only at Chaco Canyon. There were a multitude of outlying settlements in the region of what’s now northwestern New Mexico, southern Colorado, and eastern Arizona. Salmon Ruins was one such place.
Located near Bloomfield, New Mexico, Salmon Ruins is a museum and archaeological site managed by a San Juan County non-profit organization. It’s named after the 19th century family that settled there and helped preserve it years later. And, just so you know, the first syllable is pronounced like the word awl, not like how the syllable for the fish is pronounced.
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| Sign at entrance to Salmon Ruins |
Salmon Ruins is definitely worth a visit if you are in the area! I had never heard of it but when arranging to visit Chaco Canyon, that was the place where our guide, Tori Myers, said she would meet us. She is a professional archaeologist and the Executive Director of Salmon Ruins. (I cannot recommend Tori enough if you are looking for a guide to take you on a tour of Chaco Canyon.)
The museum at Salmon Ruins is very well done. In a large round room that reminded me of a kiva, there are many display cases along the walls that describe different aspects of the lives of the Ancestral Puebloan people who inhabited the site. In the center of the room, there are special temporary exhibits.
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| Tori Myers, Executive Director at Salmon Ruins, in the museum |
The gift shop has a wide selection of books, some clothing, materials for kids, pottery and jewelry, and a few postcards and other souvenirs. From the gift shop, you exit to a deck and a rather steep cement path leads down to the actual ruins. In nice weather, the deck would be an enjoyable place for a picnic but when I visited, it was cold and drizzling.
The pathway has a railing but you definitely want to be careful walking down it. Once I reached the bottom, the path was no longer paved. To my left lay the Heritage Park section and to the right were the Chaco culture ruins. I opted to see the ruins first.
Numbered markers on the trail correspond to explanations in a guidebook loaned to museum visitors so they know what they are looking at. It’s a 29-page guidebook with a detailed description of 21 different parts of the archaeological site. It's also laminated, which was great since it started to rain more heavily partway through my perambulation of the ruins.
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| A room known as the "bowling alley" because of its shape |
According to the guidebook, people lived in Salmon Pueblo beginning in the second half of the 11th century A.D. The buildings were used until the end of the 13th century and the purpose of some of the rooms seems to have changed over time. Pottery, seeds, and other artifacts have been discovered in some of the rooms.
Some buildings at Salmon Ruins were 2 or 3 stories high, although it doesn’t look like it nowadays. However, standing on the slightly rising slope of the ground, you can get a sense of the size of the pueblo. It was much larger than I expected and took me longer than anticipated to walk around it.
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| Upper level of rooms at Salmon Ruins |
Salmon Ruins had rooms in different shapes and sizes, as did Chaco Canyon, but it was only at Salmon Ruins that I saw square rooms repurposed into round kivas, as shown in the photo below. The guidebook said this one dated from about 1120.
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| This originally square room was turned into a round kiva |
The rooms behind Marker 12 helped support a tower kiva situated above and to the right. Because the path leads around the periphery of the rooms, you can look down inside them. There isn’t much to see now but the guidebook stated that some hearths were present. I think the openings in the walls on the far side held wooden beams that formed the floors of the second story.
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| Rooms built up against the Tower Kiva partially visible at the top right |
The Tower Kiva was originally roofed but now is open to the sky. On the ground, you can see a small hearth at the left. It’s not clear what the larger rectangular structure to the right was but a ranger at Aztec Ruins National Monument, the topic of my next blog post, suggested the one there could have been used for making drumming-like sounds. It was easy to imagine climbing down the ladder, finding a seat on the stone bench, and watching a performance as if I were a spectator at a theater-in-the-round.
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| Tower Kiva |
Besides the Tower Kiva, Salmon Pueblo also had a Great Kiva. Located behind the main area where most of the buildings are situated, this kiva was larger but it was more difficult to picture people using it.
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| Great Kiva |
I then retraced my steps and turned to explore the Heritage Park area. George Salmon, son of Peter Milton Salmon who was the original pioneer settler in 1877, built the house in about 1898. I couldn’t go inside but there were some wagons and farm implements scattered around the premises that were interesting to look at.
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| Salmon Homestead |
Throughout this section of the grounds, several structures give visitors an idea of the variety of cultures that inhabited this region over through the centuries. The guidebook describes them in some detail. Aside from the Salmon homestead, all the buildings are reconstructions that are meant to represent different time periods during which people inhabited this area.
The Salmon family used the root cellar to store vegetables and fruit. I peeked inside but there was nothing to see.
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| Root Cellar |
The trading post represents the intersection of Settler and Indigenous cultures in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. I didn’t look inside because not only was it raining, it had started to snow and I wasn’t dressed properly for the weather. So I didn’t spend as much time exploring the rest of Heritage Park as I would have liked.
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| Trading Post |
Heritage Park showcases 2 hogans, one male and the other female. They are shaped differently and although men and boys can enter a female hogan, women and girls cannot go inside a male hogan (as I learned from the guidebook). The hogan in the image below is a male hogan and known as a forked stick hogan because it’s constructed of 3 poles joined together in a cone shape and then filled in with other logs and covered with mud. But since this hogan did not receive a final blessing, anyone can approach it without violating cultural norms.
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| Forked Stick Hogan |
Going back in time, you will see a structure made of logs that is partially underground. This is a Basketmaker Pithouse. According to the guidebook, this pithouse represents the time period of 200 – 700 A.D. The Basketmaker people lived in the Four Corners region, including at Chaco Canyon.
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| Basketmaker Pithouse |
The “oldest” part of Heritage Park is the Ice Age Pond. It’s meant to depict the Archaic Period from around 9,000 years ago to approximately 200 A.D. The guidebook goes into detail about what the landscape looked like at this time and how people survived. It would’ve been cool to see a replica mammoth here but I had to content myself with imagining the scene.
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| Ice Age Pond area |
Salmon Ruins is a wonderful place! Adults and children alike will be fascinated by the archaeological ruins and will enjoy learning about the diversity of cultures showcased in Heritage Park. Just 20 minutes from Farmington, a quick turn off from Highway 64, it’s well worth a visit and I highly recommend spending a few hours there. Learn more about it HERE.
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