When Old Trails Were New : Story of Taos
Blanche C. Grant
- Chicago, Illinois Rio Grande Press 1963
- 344 p.
Early records -- Villages -- The massacre of 1760 -- Taos fairs -- One hundred years ago -- Trails -- Bent's fort -- Trappers -- A Taos becomes governor -- The Texas-Santa Fe expedition -- Whitman's ride -- Kearny and Bent -- The revolution of 1847 -- The trail -- Lewis H. Garrard's visit -- Padre Martinez -- Richard H. Kern's diary -- Courts -- More cases -- The fifties -- The Civil War -- After the war -- Schools and processions -- Diggin's -- Amizett and Twining -- La Belle and Elizabethtown -- Miners' tales -- 1898 -- An artist in trouble -- Forest fire -- Events the year round -- Christmas day -- The Penitentes -- The celebration in 1925 -- The Taos art colony -- Taos today.
This story of Taos, New Mexico covers some four centuries of history. It is the story of a village that never gave up despite periods of drought, violence from unfriendly Indians and other hazards of frontier life. At one time, Taos was even the site of a short-lived but bloody rebellion against the United States government. Grant tells this and other fascinating true stories of a settlement that was home to trappers and explorers and later to artists and writers. Among its famous and best-known citizens was the mountain man, Kit Carson.