Nestled in the idyllic Santa Cruz Valley of Northern New Mexico is the village of El Potrero, home to El Santuario de Chimayo, a weathered adobe church that receives thousands of visitors a year with details of supernatural phenomena to share, and invocations of gratitude and healing. Lining the smooth adobe surfaces of an adjoining room are abandoned crutches and walking canes – crocheted baby booties, handwritten notes and photographs — physical testimony deemed evidence of the revelat…
The life of Long John Dunn is a study in contrasts and a portrait of resilience.
When he was no more than 12 or 13 years old, a local boy, we’ll call him José, went to the woods fishing with his father and uncle. In an area north of Taos, they drove down a rough road about four miles into an isolated area where not too many people go. The three walked miles into the backcountry just after a rainstorm.
For years it has sat on the side of State Road 68, just south of Taos. At times it has tempted passers-by with its promise of relaxation on the banks of the Río Grande, at other times it has sat vacant, a tribute to better days.
In the ancient desert, under the stars and moonlight of the New Mexico night, a person ran a careful finger down the smooth surface of a rock face. The rock wasn’t the perfect canvas, and the process of creating a picture wasn’t easy, but this ancestor of the Puebloan Peoples was determined to etch their thoughts and dreams, their voice, into the annals of time. Ink would never last through the harsh desert elements and paper was yet to be invented, so the process of the petroglyph was born.
We are up to our necks in ghosts and legendary spirits in Northern New Mexico.
Out of the mouths of former hippy babes comes this history of Fountain of Light, the monthly counterculture tabloid published in Taos from 1969-1970. Jim Levy, editor for the last three issues, and author/journalist Phaedra Greenwood talk a little about the people who founded and worked on this now-legendary review.
— Tradiciones editor Virginia L. Clark
The federal government’s return of Blue Lake to Taos Pueblo not only carries local significance, but marked a fundamental shift in United States government policy toward American Indian people.
New Mexico’s Most Popular Public Official Succumbed to Pneumonia Which Resulted from Influenza,” read the top of the New Mexico State Register on Oct. 18, 1918. Just below, another headline read: “Influenza Spreading Rapidly Over Country.” Yet another headline stated that “Every School in the State Has Been Closed on Account of the Epidemic Previous to the Governor's Proclamation,” with the article also noting that they had converted a Valencia County high school into a hospital for handling the new influx of influenza cases.
Alleged hired killer of Alfred Bent over land grant concocts disappearing act, double-crosses desperado
Struggling with scant provisions through the rugged Taos wilderness, a 19-year-old Kentucky fur trapper and his Black servant wondered if they would ever reach American civilization alive after being freed in 1819 from imprisonment in Santa Fe.
It was a typical spring day in 1950 for a fire tower operator in New Mexico’s Capitan Mountains in Lincoln National Forest near Alamogordo. Then everything changed. He spotted smoke wafting …
Whether it be an 1865 murder gone unpunished; a young fur trapper captured by Mexican troops, in-prisoned and then banished only to return to New Mexico as a territorial governor; a pair of seemingly out-of-place stone pillars with possible ties to the Knights Templar...
Northern New Mexico pioneer Ceran St. Vrain was a leader of his time. Those who lived and worked with St. Vrain said he was a kind gentleman, a worthy and intelligent commander — polite but, …
If only the tombstones at Kit Carson Cemetery could talk, Taos area residents might be able to solve a mystery that has contributed to the collection of local folklore.
Ask an ordinary Catholic around the world to name the first book of the Bible and he’s likely to say, “Genesis; the story of Creation.” Now, ask an ordinary Taoseño to name …
The Taos Pueblo Council met to decide what to do with the strange white man who spent so many hours sitting on the bank of the river in their village. What was he doing there? What was he putting on …
¿Paradise Lost? is an excerpt of an article that first appeared in Hakol, the news magazine of the Taos Jewish Center.
