Our Taos
Our Taos community is a cluster of diverse villages.
The oldest Taos community is Taos Pueblo. Archaeologists say that ancestors of the Taos Indians lived in this valley long before Columbus discovered America and hundreds of years before Europe emerged from the Dark Ages. The main part of the present buildings were most likely constructed between 1000 and 1450 A.D. The appeared much as they do today when the first Spanish explorers arrived in Northern New Mexico in 1540 and believed that the Pueblo was one of the fabled golden cities of Cibola. Taos Pueblo is the only living Native American community designated both a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and a National Historic Landmark. The multi-storied adobe buildings have been continuously inhabited for over 1000 years.
Taos Plaza is the center of the Town of Taos. Don Diego de Vargas is said to have founded the settlement in 1696. In the 1800s Taos became the headquarters for mountain men such as Kit Carson, who married a Taoseña, Josefa Jaramillo. In 1898, Taos future was altered with the arrival of Bert Phillips and Ernest Blumenschein who stopped to have a broken wagon wheel repaired, became enchanted with Taos and decided to stay. This event started an immigration of artists that continues today. Taos is an active, energetic art colony with over 80 art galleries, five museums, and a number of venues for music, performing arts and film. It’s said that Taos has more resident artists per capita than any other community in the world. The truth of this statement is impossible to verify but it is true that in Taos creativity is a tradition and a way of life.
Taos Ski Valley, 18 miles northeast of Taos Plaza, was born in 1955 when Ernie and Rhoda Blake opened their first ski run in the old mining town of Twining. Today, over 50 years later, Taos Ski Valley still rewards skiers with a spirit of classic alpine skiing that has been passed from one generation to the next. Taos' strengths are its uncrowded skiing on wonderfully diverse terrain, abundant feather-light powder and an intimate alpine village where you are never far from the ski lifts. One of the first hotels built in the ski valley, Hotel St, Bernard, is the site of Taos School of Music seminars, where faculty, students and visitors share ideas and techniques.
Refer to our Related Links section to learn more about Taos.
Download PDF files of our Town of Taos map and our Northern New Mexico map. Thanks to TaosWebb.com for usage of these maps.
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Taos Pueblo
Aerial view of the Village of Taos Ski Valley by photographer Chris Dahl-Bredine
Ranchos Church
Farmers Market is a Saturday tradition in Taos