Taos

Taos is a small town of about 5,700 residents in northern New Mexico, at 2,100 meters (6,900 feet) elevation in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains (the southernmost subrange of the Rocky Mountains), 70 kilometers north of Santa Fe and 220 kilometers north of Albuquerque. The town's defining identity comes from a uniquely layered cultural history: the original Taos Pueblo (Tiwa-speaking Puebloan people who have continuously inhabited the same multi-story adobe complex since approximately 1000-1450 AD, making it the oldest continuously inhabited community in North America — UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1992), the surrounding Spanish colonial settlement (founded as 'San Geronimo de Taos' in 1615 by Spanish Franciscan missionaries), the 19th-century Anglo-American 'mountain man' trapper-trader culture (Kit Carson lived in Taos for 40+ years; his home is now a museum), and the early 20th-century arts colony that established Taos as one of the most important American art destinations.

The Taos arts colony emerged in the 1890s when two East Coast painters, Bert Phillips and Ernest Blumenschein, were forced to repair a broken wagon wheel in Taos en route from Denver to Mexico City, fell in love with the unique high-desert light and the surviving Pueblo culture, and convinced multiple other American Impressionist and modernist painters to establish summer studios in Taos. By the 1920s, the 'Taos Society of Artists' (Phillips, Blumenschein, E.I. Couse, Joseph Henry Sharp, and others) had made Taos one of the most important regional art centers in the United States. Mabel Dodge Luhan (a wealthy New York socialite-and-arts-patron) relocated to Taos in 1917, married a Taos Pueblo elder (Tony Lujan), and over the next 25 years invited dozens of writers, artists, and intellectuals to her Taos home — D.H. Lawrence (who lived in Taos 1922-1925 and wrote 'Mornings in Mexico'), Georgia O'Keeffe (who painted in the Taos region 1929-1949 and eventually moved to nearby Abiquiu), Aldous Huxley, Willa Cather, Carl Jung, and Ansel Adams all spent time at Luhan's hospitality. The legacy is the modern Taos art scene: about 80 active art galleries in the small downtown, the famous Harwood Museum of Art (with the country's best collection of Taos Society of Artists works), the Millicent Rogers Museum (Southwest Native American and Hispanic Colonial art), the Couse-Sharp Historic Site, and dozens of working artist studios open to visitors.

Beyond the cultural depth, modern Taos offers significant outdoor and adventure attractions. The Rio Grande Gorge Bridge (the 7th-highest bridge in the US at 200m / 656 feet above the river, with the dramatic 800-foot Rio Grande Gorge below) is 14 km west of central Taos; the standard Taos photograph. The Taos Ski Valley (one of America's top ski resorts at 2,800m base elevation, with the famous 'No Beginners' historic policy that lasted until 2008; some of the steepest patrolled in-bounds skiing in North America) sits 30 km northeast of Taos. The Wild Rivers Recreation Area (a 1,300-meter-deep gorge area at the confluence of the Rio Grande and Red River, 50 km north of Taos) offers white-water rafting, hot-spring soaking, and dramatic camping. The surrounding Carson National Forest (582,000 hectares of mountains and high desert) holds dozens of hiking trails. The Earthship Biotecture community (north of Taos, the famous sustainable-architecture community of houses built from recycled tires, glass bottles, and rammed earth) is the canonical New Mexico off-grid pilgrimage. Most international visitors stay 3-5 nights in Taos, often combined with Santa Fe (already in our blog as batch 1) for a complete northern New Mexico route. The famous 'Taos Hum' (an unexplained low-frequency hum reported by ~2% of Taos residents and visitors) adds an unusual mystery layer to the town's identity.