Taos Pueblo

Taos Pueblo is one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States — a striking complex of multi-story adobe houses that the Taos people have lived in for more than a thousand years. Rising in tiers of sun-dried earth against the mountains of northern New Mexico, its North and South houses have sheltered the same Tiwa-speaking community since long before European contact. Still a living village governed by its own people, it is both a National Historic Landmark and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Taos people, who speak a Tiwa language, have lived at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains for many centuries. The great adobe house blocks of Taos Pueblo — Hlauuma, the North House, and Hlaukwima, the South House — were built roughly between 1000 and 1450 CE and have been continuously inhabited ever since, making the pueblo one of the oldest living communities in North America.

Built entirely of adobe — earth and straw shaped into bricks and plastered smooth — the houses rise as high as five stories, their rooms stacked and stepped back like terraces. Traditionally they were entered by ladders through the roof for defense. The pueblo became a center of resistance to colonial rule: its people took part in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 against the Spanish, and in 1847 the Taos Revolt against the new American government ended in a bloody assault on the mission church.

Through Spanish, Mexican, and American rule, the Taos community endured and kept its traditions. In a landmark victory in 1970, after decades of struggle, the Pueblo regained Blue Lake, a site sacred to its people high in the mountains. Today Taos Pueblo remains a sovereign, self-governed community; by choice the historic village keeps to traditional ways, without electricity or running water in its ancient core, while welcoming respectful visitors.