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Taos Pueblo
A thousand-year-old living village in northern New Mexico
Taos Pueblo is a multistory adobe village at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico, home to Northern Tiwa–speaking Pueblo people who have lived in the Taos Valley for about a thousand years. Its two great terraced buildings, separated by Red Willow Creek, are among the oldest continuously inhabited structures in the United States. Taos Pueblo is both a National Historic Landmark and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it is the only World Heritage Site in the country where people still live.
Taos was the headquarters of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 against Spanish rule. In 1970, after a 64-year campaign, President Nixon signed a law returning sacred Blue Lake and about 48,000 acres of national forest to the Pueblo, the first major federal return of land to a tribe for religious reasons. Inside the historic village there is still no electricity or running water by choice. Leaders appointed each year by a council of elders govern the Pueblo, which closes to visitors for several weeks each year and during ceremonies, and keeps its religious life private.