City: Santa Fe, NM

Category: Tours & Attractions

Telephone: (505) 758-1028

Description: Patron saint: San Geronimo (St. Jerome). Feast day: September 30 with pre-feast ceremonies on September 29.The oldest and most well-known of all the existing northern pueblos, Taos (rhymes with “house”) is also the most striking primarily because of its multistoried, tiered adobe buildings with jutting log vigas and the rough-hewn wooden ladders residents still use to reach the upper floors. The five-story pueblo is a national historic landmark and was designated a World Heritage Site in 1992. It is one of the oldest, continuously occupied villages in North America. Although approximately 50 people live in the old pueblo, most residents now live on pueblo land nearby, with modern conveniences. Taos has inspired countless artists to capture the drama of the pueblo at dusk, when it sometimes appears golden. In winter, its graceful, snow-lined walls, rooftops, and hornos (round, outdoor mud ovens pronounced “OR-nose”) provide a striking contrast to the deep purple of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains that watch over it.Taos Pueblo—Tu-tah (“Our Village”) in the tribe’s native Tewa—sits on 105,000 acres in the foothills of the northern Sangre de Cristos. Except for some scattered modern housing, the pueblo probably looks much as it did 450 years ago, when Spain made its first foray into what would become New Mexico. This may be due in part to the northern location, which historically rendered Taos more inaccessible than other pueblos in the territory. It’s surely a result of the Taos people’s independence and fierce determination to preserve their ancient traditions and culture. The pueblo maintains a strict taboo on intermarriage and forbids plumbing and electricity in some of the oldest structures. These and other restrictions help maintain an air of serenity that belies a turbulent history whose chapters include the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and the Taos Rebellion against the United States in 1847, when 150 tribal members died.Although the Taos people have lived in the same location for more than a thousand years, much of their history and culture remains a mystery to the outside world largely because the pueblo bans excavations. Anthropologists believe the estimated 2,200 Taos Indians who live at the pueblo could be related either to the ancestral Mesa Verde or Chaco cultures. They also suspect that the nearby Plains Indians—in particular the Kiowa and Apache with whom the tribe traded—influenced the pueblo to the extent that it added leather craft to an economy once based primarily on farming, raising cattle and horses, and hunting bear, buffalo, deer, elk, and birds. The pueblo’s boots, moccasins, clothing, and drums are justly famous. These days, however, the pueblo’s primary source of income is Taos Mountain Casino.Although Taos Pueblo shrouds itself in secrecy, visitors are welcome to enjoy the architecture on almost any day and to observe some of the pueblo’s ceremonies and rituals on selected dates. These include traditional foot races in May and the Taos Pueblo Pow-Wow the second weekend in July. Taos Mountain Casino (888-WIN-TAOS; www.taosmountaincasino.com), the state’s only nonsmoking casino, is very popular. The pueblo closes to non-Indians for about six weeks starting in February or March for religious activities. Directions from Santa Fe: Take US 84/285 24.3 miles to the junction with Highway 68 in Española; go 48 miles north on Highway 68 to the junction with US 64 in Taos; 1 mile north on US 64.