The Third Court
Ground plan of Spruce Tree House
Refuse Room Kiva (8) Refuse Area
Spruce Tree House about A.D. 1260. (Museum diorama)
Station 5.
Spruce Tree House 700 years ago was a thriving village. If you could have visited it you would have seen women busily cooking over firepits in the courtyards, others grinding corn, weaving baskets or making pottery. Men who were not tending their mesa-top fields might have been building a new room, making or mending their tools or performing an age-old ceremony in one of the kivas. You would have seen children playing and old people resting against the low wall across the front of the dwelling as they basked in the warm sun dreaming of their younger days. There would also be dogs and turkeys wandering through the village and picking over the trash dump for bits to eat. Unfortunately, this all came to an end shortly before A.D. 1300.
