The historic downtown core of Aztec is unusually intact for a small New Mexico city. Several buildings from the early 1900s remain on Main Street, including the Aztec Motor Company Building from around 1906, the Engleman-Thomas Building, and the old American Hotel. The Church Avenue-Lovers Lane Historic District to the north adds a residential layer of Victorian and early-20th-century homes.
Worth a walk if you have time between the monument and your next stop. The scale is human — you can cover the whole district in 20 minutes — but the preservation quality is better than most comparable towns in the region. A couple of shops and cafes operate in the historic storefronts.