Taos

The panel's population, 3,369, was overtaken by the 1990 census, which counted 4,065; the town held about 6,500 in 2020. Its last sentence dates the art colony to the early 1900s. The usual starting point is September 1898, when Ernest Blumenschein and Bert Phillips, painting their way south from Denver, broke a wagon wheel north of town and stayed; six painters founded the Taos Society of Artists in 1915. The name Taos itself is probably the Spanish hearing of a Tiwa word for village. This copy stands on Paseo del Pueblo Sur, on the road in from Ranchos.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Taos Population 3369 - Elevation 6983 ft. The Spanish community of Taos developed two miles southwest of Taos Pueblo. It later served as a supply base for the "Mountain Men," and was the home of Kit Carson, who is buried here. Governor Charles Bent was killed here in the anti- U.S. insurrection of 1847. In the early 1900's, Taos developed as a colony for artists and writers.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Francisco de Asís Church, Ranchos de Taos — 3.0 mi
  The adobe church at Ranchos de Taos that artists always paint from behind, kept standing by the mud its parish spreads over it every June.
• Taos Pueblo — 3.6 mi
  Two terraced adobe houses facing each other across Red Willow Creek, lived in for something like a thousand years, with no electricity or running water inside the old walls.
• Rio Grande Gorge Bridge — 10 mi
  A steel truss strung across a slot in the basalt west of Taos, 565 feet above the river by the careful measure and 650 by the signs, built when the road beyond it did not yet exist.

More markers nearby

• Kit Carson Memorial Cemetery — 1.1 mi
• Taos — 2.9 mi
• San Francisco de Asis Church — 2.9 mi
• Taos Canyon — 3.2 mi