Welcome to Taos

tanjabrittonwriter 46 Comments

When traveling from Colorado Springs to Taos through southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, one of the most obvious changes is linked to architecture, as many buildings are constructed with flat roofs and covered in stucco that tends to be earth-colored, often some shade of red or brown. These types of houses have always appealed to me as they blend well into their surroundings and seem to want to be part of the landscape, rather than rise above it.

New Mexico’s Native Puebloans built their abodes out of adobe and Spanish colonists did the same. Adobe bricks are made from a mixture of local sand, clay, water, and straw (or other grasses) and dried in the sun. The technique is ancient, has been in evidence across time and space, and continues to be used in situations where humans live close to the land and conditions are hot and dry. To prolong the life of adobe structures, they are covered with plaster, which comes in various iterations, such as mud or lime, also in use since ancient times.

Stucco is a modern plaster and contains cement, sand, and water. It does not stick to adobe bricks and has to be applied to wire mesh. Most modern homes with a stucco surface are not built of adobe, but many of the older houses still are, and their upkeep is challenging. I only recently learned of adoberos and adoberas—craftsmen and –women who specialize in the repair and restoration of old adobe structures, whose survival is frequently in question. The profession is endangered and attempts are underway to teach younger generations age-old techniques in order to preserve some of the similarly endangered buildings.

Taos has charmed us ever since our first visit in 2009, and its beautiful setting in the Taos Valley with the Taos Mountains of the Sangre de Cristo Range as a backdrop, has appealed to humans for much longer. Archeological evidence of human presence stretches back for at least 9,000 years, and construction on the world-famous Taos Pueblo started around the year 1,400 (a precursor was dated to 1325). The first Spanish probe into the area arrived August 29, 1540. It was led by Capitan Hernan Alvarado, who was a member of the Coronado expedition. Taos was first colonized by Spain in 1615 and the town of Taos was established May 1, 1796. On May 7, 1934, it was incorporated as a municipality under New Mexico State law (remember that New Mexico didn’t become a US State until 1912). Its name was derived from the word Towih in the Tewa language spoken by the local Puebloans, which means (place of) red willows. In 2023 the reported population of the town is 6,631.

To enlarge a photo, click on it. To read its caption, hover cursor over it.

We didn’t visit Taos Pueblo during this most recent visit and the photos of Taos Pueblo are from the autumn 2009.

Taos Pueblo is a World Heritage Site
Part of Taos Pueblo with Taos Mountains in the background

Whenever we come to Taos (which is not often enough), we always take a stroll through downtown, and I allow my eyes feast on the appealing facades of both domestic dwellings and commercial outfits. During our visit in April of this year we enjoyed blue and sunny skies as well as our first exposure to blooming trees, a welcome sign of spring after a long and cold winter. We also like to visit the local independent bookstore, which some of you might remember as Moby Dickens, but which now carries the name of op.cit.books (which stands for opus citatum, Latin for “the work cited”). Please support your local indy bookstore!

Casa Benavides Inn in Taos (not our accommodation)
Private home in Taos
Entrance to another private home
“El Santero” mural by George Chacon. Santeros are creators of sacred artifacts and this santero is carving wood into santos’.
Taos Plaza with famous Hotel La Fonda in the background
Taos indy bookstore, “op. cit. books” the former Moby Dickens
Springtime in N.M.

I have previously talked about the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). After General Stephen Watts Kearney marched his “Army of the West” into Santa Fe and established the “provisional government of New Mexico” in 1846, Charles Bent was installed as civil governor and split his time between the capital Santa Fe and Taos, where he owned a home. Along with his brother William as well as Ceran St. Vrain, Charles had founded the iconic Bent’s Fort along the Santa Fe Trail (see here for one of my former blog posts). In 1847, he was gruesomely killed in his own home during the Taos Revolt, during which a group of Hispanos and Natives rebelled against the American take-over of their land. He refused to flee, but his wife, children, and other relatives were able to dig their way through an adobe wall into the next building and survived the attack. Governor Bent’s former home is now a museum and apart from a reconstructed hole in the wall contains information and dusty artifacts about topics ranging from paleontology to Eskimo diapers.

Charles Bent Museum
Reconstructed hole in the wall through which the family escaped

Another famous resident of Taos was Christopher “Kit” Carson (1809-1869). He was born in Kentucky, in the same year and state as Abraham Lincoln. One year later, his family moved to Missouri. His father died when he was only eight, leaving behind his wife and 10 children. The resultant poverty was the reason Kit never attended school or learned to read and write, something he would forever regret. His illiteracy did not prevent him, however, from learning to speak French, Spanish, and several Native languages fluently in the course of his life.

When he was fourteen, he was apprenticed to a saddler in Franklin, Missouri, which happened to be on the eastern end of the Santa Fe Trail. The teenager met trappers and traders whose lives seemed far more exciting than his and at sixteen, he secretly signed on as a laborer on a merchant caravan headed for Santa Fe, fleeing from his apprenticeship. He never looked back. He became a trapper and then a scout and guide. A fortuitous meeting with Charles Fremont in the 1840s led to his aiding Fremont greatly in his numerous expeditions. He was twice sent on a transcontinental journey from California to Washington, D.C., covering most of the distance on horseback or foot, except for when he could ride the train in the East.

Carson had traveled through Taos repeatedly and had long wanted to settle there. In 1843, when he was 33, he entered into his third marriage with fifteen-year-young Maria Josefa Jaramillo, daughter of a prominent Mexican family, and they moved into a local house, which is now a museum. Carson’s first marriage to an Arapahoe woman named Singing Grass ended when she passed away, and his second marriage to a Cheyenne woman when she sent him packing. His marriage to Josefa would last until her death following her eighth childbirth in 1868 when she was only 40. Kit survived her by only one month and died of an aortic aneurysm, possibly the result of syphilis.

Kit Carson Home and Museum
Carson courtyard
View of the kitchen

Kit Carson has been viewed by some as an American hero, and by others as a villain. He grew up and lived his life surrounded by various Native tribes and greatly admired Native ways and wisdoms. Yet he became an “Indian fighter” and was responsible for burning and starving the Navajo from their traditional homeland in the Four Corners Region and assisting in their forced relocation to the Bosque Redondo in eastern New Mexico, four hundred miles away. The “Long Walk” of the Navajo, which cost uncounted lives, has been compared to the Cherokee’s “Trail of Tears,” during which that tribe was force-marched from the southeastern United States to Oklahoma. When it became clear how unsuitable Bosque Redondo was for settlement, the Navajo were allowed to return home after four, long, miserable years. Even though they were assigned to a reservation much smaller than their traditional lands, and their four sacred mountains lay outside the reservation, the land covered twenty-five thousand square miles and continues to be theirs today.

In contrast to his ruthless proceedings against some tribes, Carson also worked as Indian agent and tried to do right by the tribes entrusted to his agency. Like many US citizens, Carson was convinced that America’s Indigenous tribes were fated to die out if not made to move to reservations, a convenient rationalization for a hostile land grab at best, and for genocide at worst.

I have mentioned the book Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides before, and have to admit that it humanized Kit Carson for me. Like all humans, he was full of human foibles and contradictions, but I didn’t know how much his sense of loyalty to various individuals, such as Charles Fremont, or the United States Army, which he joined during the Civil War, controlled his life. More than once he wanted to settle down to family and farming, but time and again he felt duty-bound to surrender to requests for his services. Even though he never knew leisure or retirement, in the end he was financially destitute and died a painful death after having lost his beloved wife. I encourage you to read the book for yourself and form your own opinion of the man.

Both Josefa and Kit died in Colorado, she at Boggsville, where they spent the last year of their lives, he at nearby Ft. Lyon. Both were first buried in Boggsville but were eventually reinterred in Taos, where their headstones adorn their burial sites at what is now the Kit Carson Memorial Cemetery.

Kit Carson’s grave on the right, Josefa’s on the left at Carson Memorial Cemetery in Taos

There is more to say about Taos and surroundings, but that will have to wait for another day.

46 thoughts on “Welcome to Taos”

  2. Observers of the human condition have long noted a mixture of good and bad in everyone, with differing ratios from person to person and even in the same person at different times. As you point out about Kit Carson, those simultaneous opposites are sometimes hard to reconcile, and yet we can’t deny their existence.

    With your last picture you’ve illustrated the comment I left on your May 3rd post, about how I fractured a bone near my wrist after a fall while climbing back out over the fence around Kit Carson’s grave in 2002. At the time I was a year or two younger than Kit Carson had been when he died.

    On your visits to Taos, have you visited the house of painter Ernest L. Blumenschein (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_L._Blumenschein_House)?

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    • Yes, human contradictory characteristics are hard to reconcile, both on an individual as well as on a global scale.
      I was thinking of you and your fractured wrist when I uploaded the photo of the grave and hope it has healed without complications.
      We had intended to visit a few of the local art museums, but opted to explore a recreation area south of Taos along the Rio Grande on a mild spring day. Another reason to return to Taos!

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  3. I find the vernacular style of architecture in this part of the US strangely appealing and hope that traditional, adobe-related crafts can be preserved, and properly documented by the Smithsonian / on YouTube etc

    Kit Carson was plainly a complex, multi-dimensional man. I don’t imagine Hampton Sides’ book will ever cross my path, so I’m grateful to you for giving me some insights into this enigmatic character.

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    • Thank you, Mr. P. I also hope adobe architecture will survive, both in documentaries and in actual buildings.
      The book “Blood and Thunder” has helped elucidate Kit Carson’s character as well as the crucial time period between the 1840s and 1860s, during which enormous parcels of land were added to the United States, to the detriment of many Native tribes. But as we know, nobody asked for their opinion.

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      • Once again your blog has shown up deficiencies in the curriculum when I studied US history at University (although, to be fair to my dear old alma mater, Hampton Sides’ book appears to have been published about 30 years after I graduated. Oh dear, that does make me feel old!)

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      • Don’t feel bad, Mr. P. I think many American historians and journalists are reevaluating many chapters of US history, and some of the topics that are being discussed now might have been off limits 30 years ago, or weren’t necessarily viewed with the same glasses 21st century writers see them.

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    • Thank you, Laurie, I’m glad you enjoyed learning about Taos. I know you aren’t an eager traveler, and the trip from Maine to New Mexico would take a little longer than our approach from Colorado. But if you ever decide to come out this way, you could continue on and visit the Grand Canyon in Arizona. 😊

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      • I did enjoy learning about Taos. And because I’m not an eager traveler, reading your post was my ideal way of learning about New Mexico. However, even though I am a homebody, I do realize that there’s nothing like being in a place to really come to know it.

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      • You are right, Laurie. Nothing will replace that first-hand experience. But I think most of us are armchair travelers for most places we read and learn about. There simply isn’t enough time, money, and clean enough energy to get around to all the wonderful destinations on this earth.

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  5. We had just missed being able to see inside the pueblo, closing time had passed. But we had some great food on the way out of town at a restaurant in a parking lot, sort of up on stilts or a platform. Best green salsa we’ve ever had. Too bad I can’t remember the name.

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  7. We’ve been to Taos “AGES” ago, and still remember it fondly. We’d love to go back there.
    Thanks for this highly interesting article witj all the information and the many pictures.

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  8. Fascinating article; I didn’t know all that much about Carson. He was clearly intelligent, it’s sad that he didn’t receive any formal education, but I suppose that was the norm for most during that time.

    I love the architecture of that area. I’ve only made one visit to Taos and we’ll be in Santa Fe in about 2 weeks. Looking forward to that trip! Thanks for taking us with you!

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    • Thank you, Tina, I’m glad you enjoyed the post. Living close to Fort Carson, having visited both Fort Garland, where he was stationed, and Boggsville, where he lived during his last year, I have always been curious to learn more about him.”Blood and Thunder” explores his life and times exhaustively the writing is fabulous. I highly recommend it.
      How exciting that your trip to Santa Fe will be so soon. Maybe you could take a day to visit Taos, it’s not that far, and The High Road to Taos offers spectacular scenery.

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  10. I spent a couple of weeks following the Santa Fe trail through Kansas, down to the Cimarron Grasslands. Then, I dropped into Texas and headed home through the Panhandle. I’d love to make a trip along the next portion of the trail; the history of the men who surveyed it and the settlers who followed it is fascinating, and seeing the New Mexico portion of the trail would be fun.

    Speaking of Watts and others of that time, I just dug around in what I have left of my dad’s stamp collection. I found full sheets of 3-cent stamps issued in 1946 to mark the centennial of the Watts expedition into Santa Fe, New Mexico statehood, and so on. If you’d like to have them, I’ll go through them and see what else might be there. I’m sure there are some issued for the Colorado centennial, too. Dad was a bit of a history buff as well as a stamp collector, so he had some interesting things.

    It’s amazing now to look at those stamps. They were done by engraving, of course, and they’re truly works of art; the detail is fascinating to study.

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    • Traveling the entire length of the Santa Fe Trail would be fascinating. We have visited a few of the waystations, such as Bent’s (Old) Fort in Colorado, Las Vegas and Fort Union in N.M., and a few places where wagon wheels left deep ruts, but not tried to actually follow the trail.

      Your dad’s stamp collection sounds fascinating, but I’m not a collector and I’m sure you could find a recipient who would better understand and appreciate its value.

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    • I like the idea of using natural and local materials to build a house, Ann. I have heard of cob houses but don’t remember if I have ever seen one. I assume that the inside and outside walls would also be covered with stucco to cover up the cobs.

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      • Yes, stucco (‘render’ here) is a common thing in houses around here, whatever their age and construction. Our own 1960s house has it. A friend has a very old cottage with some walls built from what she called ‘mud lump’, which I assume is ‘clay lump’, a form of adobe. Recent repairs needed specialist work – slow and expensive!

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  16. Thanks for the in depth review of this very intriguing place. Have not had the chance to visit there yet, but based on your review I’ve added it to my places to visit in the future.

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