Red Rocks - Southwest trip, 2012
SALMON RUINS, New Mexico
Salmon Ruins
| Salmon ruins is a smallish archeological museum and research site dedicated to one of Chaco Canyon's outlier pueblos. Construction at Salmon Ruins began around 1080 and the site was used by the ancient pueblo people until about 1280, when it was destroyed by fire. Running through the site is a creek that probably was used for irrigation during that time. Much later, in the 19th century the site was claimed by homesteaders by the name of Salmon, hence the name. The Salmon family farmhouse is now a part of the museum complex. | ||||
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Remnants of a Kiva - the site contained a great Kiva and a number of small Kivas. On the right remnants of wooden beams in the tower Kiva |
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| We stumbled on the Salmon Ruins site through our search for a tour of Chaco Canyon. We were very happy with the tour guide and were glad to have serendipitously discovered this archeological museum which not only contains a number of carefully excavated ruins, but also a treasure trove of artifacts that were found here during the major excavation in the 1970s. | ||||
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| Originally there were about 300 rooms here, in later times some were subdivided, resulting in some odd interior "rooms". Human remains were found in one of these spaces, quite unusual for pueblos which generally did not contain gravesites. | ||||
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Our visit to Salmon Ruins ended our stay in New Mexico, our next goal was Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. But on the way, in Farmington New Mexico we were fascinated by the inadvertent but oh so interesting sight on the right. We do not know which sign came first, but the somewhat unusual combination did give us something to think about on the drive to Colorado... only in America! | |||
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