Taos Pueblo

Taos Pueblo is not a ruin kept for visitors; it is a living town whose multi-storied adobe houses have stood on both banks of the Red Willow Creek since around 1000 CE, making it among the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States. Archaeology and oral tradition place the Tiwa people in the valley centuries before that, and the Pueblo's recorded history runs through the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, the 1847 Taos Revolt, National Historic Landmark designation in 1960, and UNESCO World Heritage inscription in 1992. The event the Pueblo's own website calls the most important in its history happened in 1970, when the United States returned 48,000 acres of mountain land including Blue Lake, a lake the Taos people hold sacred as the place their people came from, and where they believe their ancestors live. The community ascends the mountain only for ceremony, by its own account, and roughly 150 people still live full time in the old village itself.

The visit is an invitation into someone's home, and the Pueblo says so directly. It opens daily from 9 to 4, at $25 for adults, but the terms matter more than the price: restricted areas protect resident privacy and native religious practice sites, photography of tribal members requires their permission, a $6 camera fee applies, San Geronimo Chapel is closed to all photography, feast days are closed to photography entirely, and the whole village can shut for religious activities, a death in the community, or the roughly ten-week late-winter closure. The Pueblo frames these rules in its own voice, as conditions of being welcomed in, and they are the entry's cultural content as much as the architecture is. Visitors who follow them see a working community that has chosen to educate the world about itself, which is how the Pueblo's site puts it, rather than a monument preserved by someone else's permission.

Visiting

The Pueblo's own site sets every term: open daily 9 am to 4 pm subject to closure for religious activities and community deaths; adult $25, senior/student/military/group $22, children 10 and under free, $6 camera fee per person; guided tours daily from 9 am; roughly a ten-week closure in late winter and early spring (call 575-758-1028 for dates). No photography in San Geronimo Chapel, none on feast days, none of tribal members without permission, and do not enter the walled cemetery, unmarked doors, or the river, which is the community's drinking water. The address is 120 Veterans Highway, Taos, New Mexico.

Photo: [CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pueblo_Taos.jpg). Exterior architecture only, consistent with the Pueblo's own photography rules.