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Trip ideas  /  4 days in Santa Fe and Taos  /  Taos Pueblo
Taos Pueblo, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Historic site · Santa Fe, New Mexico

Taos Pueblo

Settled around 900 CE.Stacked five or six stories high.Blue Lake returned in 1970.People still live here.

Photo: John Mackenzie Burke, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Around 1000

The oldest continuously inhabited city in the United States

The Taos people settled in the valley around 900 CE and built the oldest building still standing around 1000. Taos Pueblo is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the United States and the only US World Heritage site where people live. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960 and a UNESCO site in 1992.

Around 1000when the oldest building still standing was built

The buildings

Adobe stacked five or six stories high, once entered by ladder

The north side of the pueblo is the largest multistoried Pueblo structure still existing, with adobe walls often several feet thick. Spanish visitors described houses stacked five or six stories high, entered through square holes in the roof by long wooden ladders. In the pueblo, electricity, running water and indoor plumbing are prohibited.

Red Willow Creek

A small stream from Blue Lake runs through the middle

The pueblo stands against the Taos Mountains of the Sangre de Cristo Range, built on both sides of the Rio Pueblo de Taos, also called Red Willow Creek. Its headwaters come from Blue Lake, which the people of the Pueblo consider sacred. The Pueblo's own site names the return of Blue Lake in 1970 as the most important event in its history.

A living village

People live here, and part of their life is kept private

About 150 people live in the historic pueblo full-time. Religious life is not well documented because the community keeps its spiritual traditions private. On All Souls' Day the Pueblo spends the day with families and closes the village to non-Native visitors.

1847

In 1847 the church was bombarded and over 150 people were killed

On January 19, 1847, Hispanos and Taos Pueblo people rose against the US territorial government, fearing the loss of their land, and the governor, Charles Bent, was killed. US forces defeated them at the Battle of Cañada and on February 3 bombarded the church where defenders were sheltering. More than 150 people were killed in the attack.

Day 4, morning

Next is Millicent Rogers Museum.

More stories from this trip idea

The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Taos Pueblo and the Wikipedia article Taos Revolt, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.

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