Aztec: A Name Borrowed From the Wrong Civilization

Aztec, New Mexico, sits beside the Animas River in the San Juan Basin and has been county seat of San Juan County since the county was created in eighteen eighty-seven. Early settlers gave the town its name when they saw the large ancient ruins nearby and assumed, incorrectly, that the Aztec people of central Mexico had built them. The ruins are actually a Chacoan great house, begun in the early twelfth century and later reoccupied by Mesa Verde people. The National Monument protecting those ruins was established in nineteen twenty-three.

Aztec the town was platted in the late eighteen hundreds, and a narrow-gauge railroad came through from Durango in the early nineteen hundreds. For most of its history it served as an agricultural and ranching center. Then in the early twentieth century a driller searching for water struck oil instead, and the discovery of the San Juan Basin's vast oil, gas, and coal reserves gradually transformed the entire region's economy.