Salmon Ruins
A Chacoan Great House Of About 275 Rooms Built Around 1090 On The San Juan River, Excavated In The 1970s And Run Privately By The San Juan County Museum Association; The Heritage Park Beside It Reconstructs Dwellings From 6,000 Years Of Occupation · Bloomfield, New Mexico
Around 1090 a Chacoan colony built a great house here on a terrace above the San Juan River, about fifty miles north of Chaco itself and on the same architectural template: coursed sandstone, a great kiva, around two hundred and seventy-five rooms in a C-shaped block. Chacoan influence collapsed within a few decades and the building was reoccupied by people from the Mesa Verde region, who partitioned the big rooms into smaller ones - two completely different ways of living in the same walls, which is what makes the site archaeologically interesting. It burned in the 1280s. The Salmon family homesteaded it in the 1870s and protected it, which is why it carries their name, and their farmhouse still stands. It is run privately, it has a good small museum, and it sits ten minutes from Aztec Ruins, which gets almost all the visitors. Do this one first: Salmon shows you an unreconstructed great house and Aztec shows you a rebuilt great kiva, and in that order the two teach each other.
6131 US Highway 64, Bloomfield, Bloomfield, New Mexico, 87413, United States
Open most days through the middle of the day and afternoon, with reduced winter hours and at least one closure day in some seasons, and closed on several major holidays. This is a privately run museum rather than a state or federal site, so the hours are its own and have changed - call before driving out. The Heritage Park reconstructions and the trail to the great house are walked whenever the museum is open.