Taos Pueblo

Interesting facts

In the Tiwa language the pueblo's proper name means "at red willow canyon mouth", echoing the stream that runs through the village.

The first Europeans to reach Taos were members of Coronado's expedition in 1540, who were searching for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold.

The roofs rest on vigas, logs of Engelmann spruce, covered with layers of branches, grass, mud and plaster.

The multi-storey north house is the largest such pueblo structure still standing and is said to be one of the most photographed and painted buildings in North America.

The Taos people hold that they originated from Blue Lake, and its return in 1970 restored some 48,000 acres of mountain land to the tribe.

Every August a pilgrimage climbs to Blue Lake, traditionally marking the end of the initiation of young boys into the pueblo's religious societies.

Unlike many other Pueblo communities, Taos has no kachina religion and no medicine societies.

Foot races carry religious meaning at Taos and are one of the ways the north-side and south-side halves of the pueblo express their old rivalry.

Taos potters work with micaceous clay, whose flecks of mica give the fired pots a glittering orange sheen and let them be used over an open flame.

Ansel Adams photographed the pueblo church in 1941, and a book by Adams and the writer Mary Hunter Austin is titled simply Taos Pueblo.

Why it is worth it

Taos Pueblo is a living town of earth: two great multi-storey blocks of adobe, stepped back in terraces up to five or six levels high, face each other across a stream at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Construction here began around the year 1000, and the pueblo is regarded as one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States. Its walls, often several feet thick, are built of sun-dried mud bricks and plastered with mud, and the dwellings were traditionally entered through openings in the roofs by wooden ladders.

The Rio Pueblo de Taos, also called Red Willow Creek, runs through the centre and divides the north house from the south house; tradition distinguishes the people of the two sides as winter people and summer people. Each home is made up of rooms with no internal passages connecting them to the neighbours. Within the old village, electricity, running water and indoor plumbing are not allowed, and around 150 people live there full time, while most of the tribe's roughly 4,500 members live in modern houses on the surrounding reservation. Residents speak Taos Tiwa as well as English and Spanish, and the community keeps its kiva religion alongside Catholicism, under the authority of a cacique.

The pueblo's history is one of repeated resistance. Spanish friars founded the San Gerónimo mission around 1620, and Taos was a centre of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. In 1847, during the Taos Revolt against the new American administration, US troops bombarded the church where rebels had taken refuge, killing about 150; the ruins of that church still stand in the pueblo cemetery, and the present San Gerónimo chapel beside the north house was built around 1850. Blue Lake in the mountains above, the tribe's most sacred site, was absorbed into Carson National Forest early in the twentieth century and returned to the pueblo in 1970 under a law signed by President Nixon. Taos Pueblo became a National Historic Landmark in 1960 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992.

Getting there

Taos Pueblo lies about 1.6 km (one mile) north of the town of Taos, New Mexico, and about 90 km north-east of Santa Fe. The nearest airport is Taos Regional Airport (TSM), about 12 km away.

Taos Pueblo

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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