Taos Drive

This Drive Comes From...

National Geographic Driving Guide: Southwest

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Time moves slowly in northern New Mexico’s Hispanic highlands, where past and present overlap in rural villages like Chimayó, Cordova, Truchas, and Las Trampas. The Taos art colony approaches its centennial with fanfare, while Taos Pueblo, perhaps a thousand years old, no longer counts the years. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains and the Moreno Valley draw hunters, fishermen, and winter sports enthusiasts. Red River stages Old West pageants, and a coal-fired train from Chama travels tracks of the past. Not yet a border, the Rio Grande cuts a deep gorge through sagebrush desert, while the braided Rio Chama waters the red rock country that inspired painter Georgia O’Keeffe. CONTINUED

- Española
- Las Trampas
- Picuris Pueblo
- Taos
- Red River
- Rio Grande Gorge
- Chama
- Ghost Ranch Living Museum

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Española
Española (Chamber of Commerce +1 505 753 2831) takes its name from San Gabriel de los Españoles, which was founded in 1598 as New Mexico’s first capital. It soon lost the honor to nearby Santa Fe, but retains its strong Native American and Hispanic roots. Española’s folk art fleet of low-slung, ornately customized cars makes it the self- proclaimed Low Rider Capital of the World.
From Española, New Mexico 76 joins the scenic High Road to Taos. The route winds through eroded high desert and cottonwood valleys to Chimayó, whose Hispanic weaving families specialize in vividly colored clothing and blankets. Each year, thousands of believers flock to El Santuario de Chimayó (+1 505 351 4889), the Lourdes of the Southwest, seeking cures from handfuls of sacred earth scooped from within the church. Sit in a rear pew to admire the interior, a masterpiece of Spanish colonial religious decoration.

Las Trampas
The bishop authorizing the people of Las Trampas to build San José de Gracia exhorted them to strive for “seemliness and cleanliness.” In 1760 they completed a twin-towered church whose facade is among the most dignified of any in New Mexico.

Picuris Pueblo
With about 350 residents today, Picuris Pueblo (+1 505 587 2519. Tour and photography fees) is among the smallest of New Mexico’s 19 Pueblo communities, yet one of its most hospitable. Turn left onto New Mexico 75 and follow the signs. The pueblo’s restaurant serves tribal fare, and the free museum is a place to admire prehistoric artifacts and buy contemporary versions. The humble San Lorenzo Church, the fifth on this site, is a copy of the original, which was burned during the Pueblo’s 1680 uprising against Spanish rule.
Many first-time visitors to the Taos Plateau are confused by the fact that three communities here share the name Taos: the 1,000-year-old Pueblo de Taos; Spanish colonial Taos, christened Don Fernando de Taos in 1710; and Ranchos de Taos, a Taos Pueblo farming annex established prior to the arrival of European settlers.
Approaching from the south, New Mexico 68 and 518 merge in Ranchos de Taos and pass the Church of San Francisco de Asís (+1 505 758 2754. Adm. fee). Painters Georgia O’Keeffe and John Marin and photographers Ansel Adams and Paul Strand, captivated by the massive buttresses and walls at the rear of the sanctuary, have helped make this one of the most recognized images of the Southwest. Before you enter the circa 1815 church, visit the parish hall to watch a video about its history.
Still south of the town of Taos, turn onto Ranchitos Road and follow signs to the best preserved, late northern New Mexico colonial-era house in the Southwest: La Hacienda de Don Antonio Severina Martinez (+1 505 758 1000. Adm. fee). The 21-room adobe, filled with period furnishings, looks as it did upon completion in the early 1800s. Thick windowless walls protected the Martinez clan from marauding Apache, Navajo, and Ute resisting the influx of Spanish-Mexican settlers. A sheltered life in the sun was made possible by the hacienda's two courtyards.

Taos
The best way to explore Taos (Visitor Center +1 505 758 3873 or 800 732 TAOS) is on foot, starting with the Taos Plaza. The handsome stucco rectangle embraces galleries, bookstores, and shops selling all kinds of unusual and handmade crafts.
It would be hard to find an adobe dwelling more appealing than the Blumenschein Home (222 Ledoux St. +1 505 758 0505. Adm. fee), two blocks southwest of the plaza. Taos Society of Artists co-founder Ernest Blumenschein and his artist wife bought it in 1919, made additions, and filled it with handmade Taos and European furniture. It’s a shrine to Blumenschein creativity (even their daughter wielded a brush), with more art per square foot than most galleries. Burt Harwood, another early patron of the Taos art circle, lived with his wife in a handsome house that's now the Harwood Foundation Library and Museum (238 Ledoux St. +1 505 758 9826. Mon.-Sat.; Adm. fee). Paintings here illustrate the styles of art associated with Taos. Look for a gorgeous collection of wooden saints, or santos, made by early Spanish carvers.
Follow Kit Carson Road (US 64) east from the plaza to the 12-room Kit Carson Home and Museum (+1 505 758 4741. Adm. fee). Christopher Carson—mountain man, trapper, Army scout, Union colonel during the Civil War, steely enforcer in the gathering of Navajo into camps—was 33 when he married 14-year-old Josefa Jaramillo, the daughter of a wealthy Taos family. Carson gave her the house as a wedding present. It’s full of mountain-manly gear, historical documents, artifacts, and antiques. Kit and Josefa are buried in nearby Kit Carson Park (+1 505 758 4160), a 20-acre [8.1-hectare] wooded expanse of green just north off Paseo del Pueblo Norte.
Up the street is one of Taos’s most interesting homes, created by a Russian émigré artist, Nicolai Fechin. He embellished the antique adobe with Russian-style woodwork, preserved today by the Fechin Institute (227 Paseo del Pueblo Norte. +1 505 758 1710. Mem. Day–Oct. Tues.-Sun.; Adm. fee). Exhibits recall the painter’s innovative spirit as a mentor and teacher. A few blocks away stands another preserved residence, now the Governor Bent Museum (117A Bent St. +1 505 758 2376. Adm. fee). The rough-hewn adobe is where, in 1847, territorial governor Charles Bent was killed by a mob protesting New Mexico’s annexation by the United States. The stolid building is a somber repository of artifacts going back to prehistoric Indian times.
Taos Pueblo (+1 505 758 9593. Adm. fee, plus fees for photography, sketching, and filming) is five minutes north of town and a thousand years removed. Park on the broad plaza between two sprawling, multistory adobe buildings (North House and South House), built between A.D. 1000 and 1450. Signs invite you into craft and curio shops and bakeries selling bread baked in small earthen outdoor ovens. About 2,000 tribal members live outside the pueblo on reservation land, while the 200 or so who live here forsake electricity and running water. Inside the pueblo’s Church of San Gerónimo, a painting of the Virgin Mary surrounded by a halo of golden corncobs illustrates the community’s spiritual duality. The chapel was built about 1850 to replace an earlier church destroyed during the Mexican-American War.
Standard Oil heiress Millicent Rogers came to New Mexico in 1947, fell in love with everything about it, and began to collect the best examples of Native American and Hispanic art she could find. Her collection, perhaps the finest in the world, is housed 4 miles [6.4 kilometers] north of Taos in the adobe-style Millicent Rogers Museum (New Mexico 522 off US 64. +1 505 758 2462. Closed Mon. Nov.-April; Adm. fee). For a scenic circular drive, take US 64 east from Taos through Carson National Forest to the Moreno Valley. New Mexico’s highest pe ak, 13,161-foot [4,011.5-meter] Mount Wheeler, looms darkly to the west.
Sandstone walls rising west of the highway, just north of Eagle Nest, are remnants of the Mutz Hotel in long-dead Elizabethtown, which sprang up in 1868 following a gold strike along Willow Creek. A dirt road from the highway passes by small ranches to reach the ruin, which is photogenic but without interpretive information.

Red River

Storefronts in Red River

Photograph © Danny Lehman

You can coast most of the way down from 9,820-foot [2,993.1-meter] Bobcat Pass, the spine of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, to Red River (Chamber of Commerce +1 505 754 2366 or 800 348 6444). This old mining outpost has become a mountain-country recreation spot and living history Old West town. There are streamside campgrounds west of town in the Red River Canyon, where you can picnic to the rush of water amid the rustle of quaking aspen.

New Mexico 38 west through the Sangre de Cristos to Questa crosses broad grasslands and forests. If you follow the Red River to its meeting with the Rio Grande, you’ll find yourself in a narrow gorge looking up 650 feet [198.1 meters] at a strip of sky in the heart of the Rio Grande Wild River Recreation Area (Visitor Center +1 505 758 8851). For an impressive view into the chasm, take New Mexico 522 north from Questa 3 miles [4.8 kilometers], turn left at signs pointing west to the village of Cerro, and continue 3 more miles [4.8 kilometers], taking the road’s right fork to mesa-like La Junta Point. There are campsites, picnic tables, and a nature trail on the canyon rim among sagebrush and centuries-old pinyon trees. Five trails—short but steep—descend to the river, where pines grow. The 0.8-mile [1.3-kilometer] Big Arsenic Springs Trail leads to petroglyphs chipped into boulders.

Rio Grande Gorge
Take New Mexico 522 south past San Cristobal and head west on US 64. What first looks like a bluff on the desert ahead is the west wall of the Rio Grande Gorge. Parking areas on both sides of the span across the chasm afford good, dizzying, views down to the fast-flowing river.
The highway between Tres Piedras and Tierra Amarilla is one of New Mexico’s most scenic, threading the Brazos Mountains, where grassland basins and forests of evergreen and aspen at 10,000 feet [3,048 meters] are so cleanly delineated they look like landscaping. The Brazos Cliffs, composed of 1.7- to 1.8-billion-year-old Precambrian quartzite (the cliffs contain the oldest known rock in New Mexico), plunge 2,000 feet [609.6 meters] to the Rio Chama Valley.

Chama
In 1880 the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad laid a spur line southwest to link the San Juan mining region with Denver, Colorado, and eastern markets. New Mexico and Colorado now own the refurbished 64-mile [103-kilometer] route between Chama (Welcome Center +1 505 756 2235) and Antonito, Colorado, a national register site traveled by the privately operated Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad (Chama Depot +1 505 756 2151. Half-day excursions also available. Mem. Day–mid-Oct.; Fare). Coal-burning locomotives depart from Chama’s antique railyard, wind through the San Juan Mountains and the Toltec Gorge cut by the Los Pinos River, and chuff over the 10,015-foot [3,052.6-meter] Cumbres Pass to Antonito. This is the real thing; making advance reservations are essential.

Ghost Ranch Living Museum

Ghost Ranch high country

Photograph © Macduff Everton

For a look at creatures native to this country but seldom seen, visit the Ghost Ranch Living Museum (+1 505 685 4312. Tues.-Sun.; Adm. fee), a Forest Service sanctuary near Ghost Ranch, to help injured or orphaned animals unable to survive in the wild. In 1949 O’Keeffe moved to a hacienda in the village of Abiquiu, renovating and refining the house—a subject of her painting—until shortly before her death in 1986 at age 98. Her airy adobe is open to the public by advance reservation only (+1 505 685 4539). The panoramas across the Rio Chama Valley that compelled her to relocate here, however, are always at hand.