The Anazasi, centered in the region of present northwestern New Mexico, construct, around 1100, a large stone and timber pueblo village, located in the oasis-like valley of the Las Animas River, in the midst of a semiarid region of cactus, sage, and juniper.
The Aztec Ruins National Monument preserves ancestral Pueblo structures in northwestern New Mexico, United States, located close to the town of Aztec and northeast of Farmington, near the Animas River.
Salmon Ruins and Heritage Park, with more ancestral Pueblo structures, lies a short distance to the south, just west of Bloomfield near the San Juan River.
The buildings date back to the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, and the misnomer attributing them to the Aztec civilization can be traced back to early American settlers in the mid-nineteenth century.
The actual construction was by the ancestral Puebloans, the Anasazi.
The main dwelling of the pueblo village in the oasis-like valley of the Las Animas River is a three-story structure of 500 rooms; adjacent to this structure is the so-called Great Kiva, a circular ceremonial structure (that is the largest in contemporary North America).
The villagers of the Las Animas River valley grow corn, beans, and squash in the irrigated bottomlands.
