Western Vacation Destinations

Kit Carson and Taos New mexico – Bus Tours southwest

Christopher Houston “Kit” Carson (December 24, 1809^[1] – May 23, 1868) was an American frontiersman and Indian fighter. Carson left home in rural present-day Missouri at age 16 and became a Mountain man and trapper in the West.^[2] Carson explored the west to California, and north through the Rocky Mountains. He lived among and married into the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes. He was hired by John C. Fremont as a guide, and led ‘the Pathfinder’ through much of California, Oregon and the Great Basin area. He achieved national fame through Fremont’s accounts of his expeditions. He became the hero of many Dime novels

Carson was a courier and scout during the Mexican-American war from 1846 to 1848, celebrated for his rescue mission after the Battle of San Pasqual and his coast-to-coast journey from California to deliver news of the war to the U.S. government in Washington, D.C.. In the 1850s, he was the Agent to the Ute and Jicarilla Apaches. In the Civil War he led a regiment of mostly Hispanic volunteers at the Battle of Valverde in 1862. He led armies to pacify the Navajo, Mescalero Apache and the Kiowa and Comanche Indians. He is vilified for his conquest of the Navajo and their forced transfer to Bosque Redondo where many of them died. Breveted a general, he is probably the only American to reach such a high military rank without being able to read or write, although he could sign his name.

Taos -

Still home to one of the longest-established Native American populations in the US, though transformed by becoming first a Spanish colonial outpost, and more recently a hangout for bohemian artists and New Age dropouts, Taos (which rhymes with “mouse”) has become famous out of all proportion to its size. Just seven thousand people live in its three component parts: Taos itself, around the plaza; sprawling Ranchos de Taos, three miles to the south; and the Native American community of Taos Pueblo, two miles north.

Beyond the usual unsightly highway sprawl, Taos is a delight to visit. Besides museums, galleries, and stores, it still offers an unhurried pace and charm, and the sense of a meeting place between Pueblo, Hispanic, and American cultures. Its reputation as an artists’ colony began at the end of the nineteenth century. Not long afterward, society heiress Mabel Dodge arrived and married an Indian from the Pueblo to become Mabel Dodge Luhan. She in turn wrote a fan letter to English novelist D.H. Lawrence, who visited three times in the 1920s; his widow Frieda later made her home in Taos. New generations of artists and writers have “discovered” Taos ever since, the most famous of all being Georgia O’Keeffe, who stayed for a few years at the end of the 1920s.