Where did Ancestral Puebloans get their construction materials?
Ancestral Pueblo builders used local adobe mud for walls and cottonwood, pinyon pine, and juniper for most roofs. For the massive West Ruin, however, the people cut and carried ponderosa pine, spruce, Douglas-fir, and aspen from mountains tens of miles away for the roofs, while masons cut and carried stone from quarries up to three miles away for its thick walls.
Ancestral Pueblo builders used local adobe mud for walls and cottonwood, piñon pine, and juniper for most roofs. For the massive West Ruin, however, the people cut and carried ponderosa pine, spruce, Douglas fir, and aspen from mountains at least twenty miles to the north for the roofs, while masons cut and carried stone from quarries up to three miles away for its thick walls.
