Town of Taos aims to rename Kit Carson Park by year’s end

Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect when Kit Carson and his wife, Josefa Jaramillo, purchased their home in Taos.

Kit Carson Park, a 19-acre green space shaded by centuries-old cottonwoods within the Taos Historic District, hummed with activity Friday afternoon as crowds joined in the music, color and clamor of Taos Fiestas, an annual celebration of Spanish heritage.

Many festival-goers passed by the roadside sign that bears the name of the famous 19th-century frontier guide who is buried in the cemetery nearby and for whom the park is named: Christopher “Kit” Carson.

The sign is expected to change by year’s end, as a six-person committee formed earlier this year by the town of Taos takes aim at upending what some argue is a painful local reminder of one of the darker chapters in American history.

“I didn’t set out in this process to become a specialist in frontier history in the Indian Wars,” said Genevieve Oswald, a Taos councilor who chairs the Kit Carson Park Renaming Committee. “But I’ve read a lot of books now and understand that there was clear deceit; there was thievery and there was strong motivation to remove people from resources. I think generally people know the difference between right and wrong, and it’s a pitfall of government that bad choices get made. History reflects the ugliness of humanity, and it’s everyone’s opportunity who’s in a position to make choices to do better going forward.”

Committee meetings held monthly in the town’s council chambers, a block away from the park, have been designed, in part, to elucidate their objective — with guest speakers and community panels adding context to the position that Kit Carson’s name should be struck from park signage.

Jim Kristofic, a local high school teacher and author of the 2021 book, “Send a Runner: A Navajo Honors the Long Walk,” and Edison Eskeets, an ultramarathon runner and co-author of the book, spoke at a committee meeting Wednesday.

In their book, the authors retrace the steps of the Long Walk of the Navajo, the forced relocation of 10,000 Navajos and 500 Mescalero Apache to an internment camp on the Bosque Redondo from 1864-1868.

“The Long Walk was a preventable act,” Kristofic said at the meeting. “It was not something inevitable. People say things like, ‘Well, history has its way. History has its force. That person was a man of their time or a woman of their time.’ I’m a historian by training. I’ve written a 450-page history book that won awards. I’m a trained archivist. I am pretty astute about studying history, and if you really study history, you know that that’s just not true.”

Carson, a mountain man who gained fame guiding American military expeditions into New Mexico and California during the Mexican-American War, executed the Long Walk under the command of U.S. military officer James Henry Carleton. As many as 3,500 Native Americans died of starvation or disease over the course of the 250-450 mile journey to the Bosque or following their arrival, according to the National Museum of the American Indian.

Carson’s critics say his involvement in the operation permanently tarnished his legacy and should preclude his name from commemoration in public spaces. Their sentiment reflects a wider restorative justice movement that has grown in the United States over the last 10 years, particularly in the American South, where several Confederate monuments have been removed.

In New Mexico, controversy has also developed in Santa Fe, where a Kit Carson obelisk was toppled in 2023, and in Española, where a Hispanic man shot a Native activist that same year during a protest of a statue of Juan de Oñate outside a county complex.

Initial efforts to rename Kit Carson Park originated in the 1970s with protests that condemned Carson as a “tramp, renegade and murderer,” but the rallies ultimately failed to persuade local officials to rename the space. The idea regained steam in Taos in 2014, when the council at the time unilaterally opted to rename the park “Red Willow Park,” a reference to Taos Pueblo’s “the Red Willow people,” an idea the tribe later rejected.

Oswald said she was approached by “a constituent” in October who asked if the renaming effort would resume. Oswald agreed to look into the matter, and the town council voted unanimously to form a committee to present alternative names for the park by the end of this year.

“The council voted to rescind the name change to Red Willow Park, but they kept the decision to change the name in place,” Oswald told the Journal. “Then they added a motion to form a committee and then to work toward separating, if possible, the cemetery from the park and turning the cemetery into a National Historic Register. That was how the conversation ended, and 10 years later, a whole bunch of business still hasn’t gotten done.”

In forming the committee, Oswald, who was elected in 2023, knows that she has placed herself at the center of a historic controversy over Carson’s legacy in Taos, where he settled with his wife, Josefa Jaramillo. The adobe home they purchased in 1843 is still located not far from Taos Plaza along Kit Carson Road, a section of U.S. 64 that wends its way into Carson National Forest, also named for the famous frontiersman. The Carson home was converted into a museum and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1963.

Local news articles highlighting the renaming effort have been dominated by dissent from local residents, some of whom argue that renaming the park removes an important piece of Taos history. Others say Carson’s legacy with Native Americans is more nuanced than his critics acknowledge, noting that the Indian agent and U.S. Army officer’s first two wives were Native American, that he spoke several Indigenous languages and spent many years living among the tribes of the Southwest.

Oswald created an online survey in May posing questions for the community to answer about the renaming process, but none asked for public input about whether the park’s name should change. A total of 14 respondents completed the survey by the time it closed on July 20, with some still dissenting against the committee’s mission in their responses.

Regardless, Oswald and the six-person committee, which includes a tribal member from Taos Pueblo, say they remain steadfast in their mission to rename the park. Instead, the committee discussion this month focused on how future polls would solicit feedback on how the park could be enhanced, such as by improving its infrastructure and overall safety.

Oswald emphasizes that she is not a voting member of the committee, but she said she intends to vote along with her fellow council members when the committee presents name alternatives before the end of the year.

“I think my community deserves good process and deserves to have things done,” Oswald said. “I know where I stand: I think it is the right thing to do to remove the name of Kit Carson from a public space in this very diverse community.”

The committee meets on the fourth Wednesday of the month and plans to begin proposing name alternatives in October.