Inside Taos Pueblo, the tiny American town that's hardly changed in 1,000 years

Standing in front of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, deep within the state of New Mexico, I watched as dough boules were placed into an outdoor oven, dome-shaped, like an earthen beehive. Nearby, the Red Willow Creek shot green into this high desert as it wove through the Native American pueblo of Taos, where lines of wooden racks for drying corn stood against tiers of caramel-gold adobe houses, which rose like giant steps. 

Though “pueblo” is the Spanish word for village, it was used by the conquistadors – who arrived in America’s southwest in the 1500s – to denote New Mexico’s indigenous communities, who subsequently came to be known by some as “Puebloans”. Today, New Mexico is home to America’s fourth largest number of indigenous people, with 19 pueblos, and despite history’s cruelties, their culture is still very much alive.

It was this which had drawn me to Taos Pueblo – called Tuah-Tah (“the place”) in its residents’ native language, Tiwa – which has been home to the Red Willow people for more than a thousand years, recognised as one of North America’s oldest continuously inhabited communities and a Unesco World Heritage site. 

Set in the state’s north – 150 miles from Albuquerque and 45 from the Colorado border, surrounded by miles of wide, open horizons and blusher-pink hills, blue-silver sagebrush and red-and-white mesas rearing out of the plains – to reach the pueblo, you must cross a gigantic gash in the earth: the 30-mile-wide Rio Grande Gorge, part of the Rio Grande Rift, a primeval, volcanic canyon through which the Rio Grande River tumbles. 

Choosing to remain without electricity or running water, still governed by traditional beliefs and the laws of nature, I was eager to understand how such a place lives in harmony with the modern world around it.

I was not the first to be drawn here. After the conquistadors, who came in search of the fabled cities of gold (which turned out to be the mica minerals which still shimmer in the adobe) came filmmakers (scenes of cult films, such as Easy Rider, were filmed here) and artists, like Georgia O’Keefe, who painted the town’s architecture. 

I, however, had come to Taos Pueblo to do a bread-making course – which at first might seem an odd reason to travel from the UK to a community in the northern reaches of New Mexico. But bread, it seems, is a fitting introduction: baked as it is in traditional horno ovens ahead of the pueblo’s many feast days, the biggest of which – despite honouring a patron saint imposed by Spanish missionaries – is San Geronimo Day on September 30, when black-and-white striped, sacred clowns appear, and the community joins to break bread.

Despite the influences of Catholicism, the indigenous peoples of Taos Pueblo also keep strong ties with their native religion, and all their dances, songs and prayers honour nature, which remains a guiding force in everyday life. 

When the boules had risen, we ate great hunks of the soft, warm bread, dripping in butter, looking across the dusty plaza towards the stark geometry of this ancient place. Afterwards, 28-year-old local guide Jaylen took me for a walk around town.

“Previously we had no doors or windows,” she explained as we passed a series of long, wooden ladders leading up the varying levels of the buildings like Escher’s endless staircases. “Instead, we entered our rooms from the roof, using these. And instead of running water, we haul the water from the river with buckets.” 

Certain areas of the pueblo are cordoned off, where the ceremonial chambers, known as kivas, lie hidden under the ground. Much about the pueblos remains enigmatic, protected from the commodification that’s befallen many similar sites. “Everything here is done by ceremony,” said Jaylen. “Some are open to outsiders, but the sacred ones are not.”

We came into a plaza, from which various narrow alleyways radiated, dotted with small shops selling silver jewellery set with turquoise, elk and buffalo hide drums, and colourful moccasins. I looked out at the glistening adobe houses and the mountains beyond, and hoped very much that Taos Pueblo would be here, just as it is now, for another thousand years.

Essentials 

The Phoenix has rooms from £345 per night, sleeping four. 

British Airways flies from London to Denver from £600 return, from which it is a five-hour drive to Taos. Guided tours of Taos pueblo can be arranged with Heritage Inspirations from £250 for the horno baking day. For more information visit taospueblo.com.

This article has been edited to correct an error in a previous image caption.

Have you visited Taos Pueblo? Please share your experience in the comments section below

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