Kit Carson House in Taos receives a $750,000 restoration grant

TAOS — New York Times bestselling author Paul Andrew Hutton says there are oral and written histories, then there are the places where the past still seems to dwell.

As adviser to the Carson House & Museum in Taos, Hutton sees a recent $750,000 Save America’s Treasures grant Kit Carson House Inc. received last month as an important resource in preserving one of Taos’ most important historic sites.

“They do a nice job of presenting Carson’s home as a slice of life, as a way to step back into the past. It’s almost like living history,” said Hutton, a retired distinguished professor of history at the University of New Mexico and author of the recently released book, “The Undiscovered Country: Triumph, Tragedy and the Shaping of the American West.”

The federal grant is the largest in the museum’s history and is administered by the State, Tribal, Local, Plans and Grant Division of the National Park Service, according to Kit Carson House Board President Martin Jagers.

He said the funding will be used to support restoration efforts for the historic adobe, which was built in 1825 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1963. The Masonic Bent Lodge No. 42 purchased the Carson house in 1910 and transferred the property to Kit Carson House Inc. in 2024.

Carson, a famous mountain man, frontier guide, Indian agent and U.S. officer, bought the home in 1843 as a wedding gift for his wife, Maria Josefa Jaramillo, whose family constructed the adobe residence near Taos Plaza. Over the next two decades, Jaramillo largely took on the responsibility for raising the family’s children and adopted Native American orphans.

Carson’s presence in Taos was intermittent as he guided missions of exploration and conquest throughout the Western U.S., exploits that would earn him legendary status in his own time and controversy in the modern era.

“I see him as almost the central figure of western history, and certainly in my new book, he plays an oversized role because he was like the Forrest Gump of western history,” Hutton said. “He’s everywhere — from the Santa Fe Trail to the era of the mountain men to the era of exploration, conquest of California and New Mexico, and then the Indian wars. And of course, he was an Indian agent.”

Stepping into the Carson home today gives visitors a palpable sense of what it might have been like living in Taos during the apex of Westward Expansion. Portraits of Carson and Jaramillo loom on the home’s earthen walls over a treasure trove of 19th century artifacts — Carson’s desk, rifles, writings and cannonballs from the 1680 Taos Revolt are displayed alongside more prosaic items from the period.

Jagers, who has served as board president of the museum since May 2021, said the nonprofit consulted with National Park Service architects in 2023 to evaluate the condition of the structure and began refining a plan to preserve it that year.

On a tour of the historic home on Sunday, Jagers noted recent restoration efforts for the 200-year-old adobe. The structure’s exterior walls were in severe disrepair before grants from the Town of Taos and State Historic Preservation Office funded the installation of three underground vaults, which now divert water away from the home’s delicate facade.

“They appear to be working really well,” Jagers said, noting plans are also in the works to replace the roof over the entire Carson compound. “We’re going to document all that with a short video and hopefully some QR code audio stations in the courtyard to explain about adobe architecture and this project that we’re doing.”

The nonprofit’s plans for the museum go beyond preserving the historic landmark and include “a goal to broaden the narrative after we get the structure repaired,” Jagers said. “We want to bring in different perspectives, and have concrete examples and exhibits of local history.”

In the rear of the property, a separate residence called the Romero House is also slated for repair. The structure will be dedicated to telling a deeper history of Westward expansion, including Carson’s leadership in the Navajo Campaign that led to the forced removal of the Diné people from their homelands in 1863-64.

That controversial late chapter in Carson’s life is also central to the Town of Taos’ efforts to rename nearby Kit Carson Park by the end of this year.

Hutton said Carson was known in his time as both an Indian fighter and a friend to Native Americans.

“Kit Carson was a good soldier, but he was also revered by the Indians, especially the Utes. They respected him as a fighter. They allied with him,” Hutton said. “The Jicarilla Apaches and the Utes allied with him when he went out onto the plains in that famous campaign in Adobe Walls. The Utes and the Pueblos allied with him when he waged the Navajo Campaign, the Canyon de Chelly campaign. Who your friends are kind of tells you the attitude they had toward you.”

Hutton lived in New Mexico for over 40 years and now resides in Cody, Wyoming, where he serves as interim curator for the Buffalo Bill Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center.

While he’s made his career in finding fresh ways to tell familiar stories, he says there’s no replacement for visiting the sites where history was forged.

“In the confines of the museum, like where I work now, we have our exhibits — and they’re superb,” he said. “But to be in the actual place, to be in Kit Carson’s house, you’re actually in Kit Carson’s house for heaven’s sake, and all kinds of famous people were there. How great to also be able to breathe that air, inhabit that space. It’s just a treasure, and Taos is lucky to have it.”