National Monument Visit Planner Connections Aztec Ruins National Monument is a place that bridges the past with modern peoples and traditions. For many Southwest Indians, the site is a sacred, ancestral place.
Several tribes maintain deep spiritual ties with the area through story, prayer, and ceremony.
Their timeless connections to its landscape, structures, artifacts, and stories are potent reminders of who they are and where they came from. Aztec Ruins offers visitors opportunities to contemplate ancestral connections, and to forge connections of their own. Ancestral Pueblos Remains left by early inhabitants are widespread in the Four Corners area. Aztec Ruins, built and used over a 200-year period beginning in the late 1000s, is one of the largest Ancestral Pueblo communities in the Animas River valley. Early builders were influenced by Chaco Canyon to the south, where another large Ancestral Pueblo community is located.