DURANGO, COLORADO

TO

AZTEC, NEW MEXICO

US 550

Durango was created by the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, and trains still run on the same tracks, from Durango to Silverton. The tourist trains out of Chama, New Mexico run on tracks of the D&RG, as well, but between Durango and Chama, the line is abandoned. If you ride the train to Silverton, be sure to take water, snacks, and a warm jacket.

Durango is built on glacial terraces. The Animas Glacier in the Animas Valley was probably the largest glacier in the San Juan Mountains at fifty miles long with ice as much as 2000 feet thick. It originated near Silverton and is believed to have advanced at least three, maybe five, times.

ROAD LOG

Leave Durango on 550 south. The highway climbs up steeply onto Florida Mesa, where the road cuts are in the Animas Formation. On the east side of this mesa, the Florida River flows south on its way to join the Animas near Bondad. Note that the Florida River was named by Domínguez and Escalante in 1776, and the proper pronunciation is still "flor-EE-da," although the gender has been changed from the original "Florido."

Milepost 5. As the route descends from the mesa to the Animas flood plane, you can glimpse the agricultural fields along the river on the west. Co. 310/318 turns east toward Ignacio. Where it climbs up the mesa you can see the road cut in the Nacimiento Formation, gray shale, overlain by the San Jose Sandstone. The rocks for the next several miles are similar, with sandstone in the San Jose forming ledges above mudstone layers. Ahead the scenery is all variations on the same theme.

On the east are the Mesa Mountains. Toward the west the mesas are individually named.

Cross the Animas River. On the east is a bridge on the abandoned D&RG railroad line from Durango to Farmington. Another is nearer the highway ahead. The valley narrows to a canyon in the San Jose Formation. Rock falls at the big curve used to endanger drivers, but the new wider road should be safer.

Cross the state line into New Mexico.

Milepost 173. You will notice deer fences. These eight-foot barriers were added after a road widening project in hope of reducing accidents along this stretch of highway. Prior to the fencing drivers here were 2.5 times more likely to have a wreck than on other roads in New Mexico, and seventy percent of such accidents involved deer. Nationally, there are an estimated 726,000 auto-deer accidents annually causing at least 200 human deaths and many injuries.

The flood plain of the Animas River is a fertile area for orchards and truck farms. Produce stands along the highway are open in season. When the trees along the river change color in autumn this is a beautiful drive.

Aztec. The town was founded in 1879, but not named Aztec until 1890. The D&RG railroad used to serve the town on its line to Farmington. The first natural gas well in the San Juan Basin was drilled near Aztec in 1921. The Aztec Oil Syndicate built a two-mile long pipeline into the town of Aztec. The syndicate's primitive system lacked pressure regulators, which led to several house fires the first winter.

Stephen Lekson has recently proposed that the Anasazi community at Aztec, long regarded as a Chacoan outlier, became the Chacoan center of political power from 1125, when Chaco Canyon was abandoned, until 1275. Lekson suggests that Chacoans later moved south to build Pacquimé [Casas Grandes] in what is now Mexico. He bases this on several facts including slight overlaps in time among the three sites, and the alignment of all three on the same meridian. He admits that his theory has far to go before it is accepted, but the marshalling of evidence in his book makes fascinating reading. Aztec Ruins National Monument is a pleasant place to visit.

Aztecs in the Four Corners?

The city of Aztec has nothing to do with the people of that name in Mexico, although early settlers thought a northern branch of that tribe had built the ruins along the Animas River, which are now included in the national monument.

There are many places in the Four Corners with names relating to the Aztecs of Mexico. This came about for several reasons. The first White men in the region found a land inhabited by nomadic Utes and semi-nomadic Navajos, neither of whom built anything like Pueblo Bonito or the other magnificent ruins scattered across the landscape. They looked to Mexico for the builders, as did the first archaeologists, including Adolph Bandelier. The debate about Mesoamerican influences on the Anasazi civilization continues today.

One source of confusion is the information given by Native Americans themselves. In 1849 a Jemez guide named Hosta informed Lt. J. H. Simpson that the ruins in Chaco Canyon were probably built by Montezuma and his followers before they migrated to Mexico. Also native people in southern Arizona considered themselves descendants of Montezuma and the Aztecs. The idea that the Aztecs had been a presence in the Southwest became official wisdom, resulting in names such as Aztec Ruins, New Mexico and Montezuma's Castle, Arizona. In 1882 it was published as fact in New Mexico Territory's Blue Book that Montezuma had been born at Pecos Pueblo.

This idea is not as irrational as it might seem today. It was known that the Aztecs had migrated from the north to where they founded Tenochtitlan. But from how far to the north had they come? Most archaeologists believe that Aztlan, the legendary home of the Mexica [Aztecs], was either mythical or probably located in northern Mexico, not the Southwest of the United States. Still, many of the pueblos historically had a "savior" figure, or culture hero, in their mythology who was known by several names depending on the language of the village, but who was also called Montezuma, or who's second in command was Montezuma. As one example, the Tewa people called the culture hero "Poseyemu." His story includes many similarities to that of Jesus Christ. Poseyemu was born to a woman of humble status after a miraculous impregnation. Following a precocious childhood he performed miracles and/or made prophecies. Some variations of the story have him promising to return to free his people from the yoke of the Spanish invaders. Often the legends, similar to the beliefs of the ghost dance cult of the Plains Indians, say that when he returned rain would come, grass would grow, and game animals would become abundant.

The various stories seem to blend aspects of the legendary leader who led the Aztecs' migration with Montezuma I and Montezuma II. Montezuma I was a popular king, under whom the Aztecs prospered. The second was a vacillating ruler who was bested by Cortez and his army. It's not clear how these myths came to the Southwest. They may have been imported with the Spanish settlers and their Indian servants, at least in part. But in any event, during the nineteenth century several pueblos kept a sacred fire burning constantly so that the smoke could guide Montezuma to them.

White settlers in the Southwest invented their own legends of Montezuma, usually involving Aztec treasures. For example, in 1914 a treasure hunter arrived in Kanab, Utah with a newspaper clipping of Mexican petroglyphs, which he believed indicated that Montezuma's treasure was buried in Johnson Canyon. Most of the town spent some time digging holes and tunnels there over the next six years, but, of course, no gold was found. The story resurfaced in 1989 when another man decided that the treasure was beneath a pond in a different location. He tried diving in the lake and found a tunnel, he said, where ghosts tried to choke him. Giving up on that approach he wanted to drain the pond, but unfortunately for him, it is home to an endangered species of snail, so he was forbidden to disturb the habitat.

Going on: The route through Aztec to Farmington to Shiprock is often busy. You should be watching traffic rather than rocks in roadcuts. I will point out that this route crosses San Juan River terraces, and you will undoubtedly notice rounded cobbles of rock that have been washed out of the San Juan Mountains. Some of them were plucked up in Pleistocene glaciers and smoothed by the streams that carried them down to the San Juan River. One of my favorite colorful rocks, the 1.8 billion-year-old Vallecito Meta-conglomerate, appears in these terraces. Boulders of it have washed down the Pinos River from outcrops north of Vallecito Reservoir. Also ahead are exposures of late Cretaceous basin filling formations: the Fruitland, Kirtland, Ojo Alamo, and Pictured Cliffs Sandstone. The type section of the latter formation is right beside the highway a few miles west of the town of Kirtland; it was named for the petroglyphs that appear on the short cliffs there.

Major References

Fields, Virginia M. and Victor Zamudio-Taylor. The road to Aztlan; art from a mythic homeland. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2001.

Lekson, Stphen H. The Chaco Meridian; centers of political power in the ancient Southwest. Altamira Press, 1999.

New Mexico Geological Society. Mesozoic geology and paleontology of the Four Corners region. NMGS, 1997.

Ortiz, Alfonso, ed. Handbook of North American Indians, v. 9; Southwest. Smithsonian Institution, 1979.