Town of Taos renames Kit Carson Park to Red Willow Park

TAOS — The Town of Taos Council voted at a special meeting Monday to rename Kit Carson Park to Red Willow Park at the request of Taos Pueblo, opening a new chapter in a decades-old dispute over the 19th-century frontiersman’s appellation adorning the central green space.

Councilor Genevieve Oswald, who chaired the committee to rename the park, voted for the change alongside councilors Darien Fernandez and Corilia Ortega, while Mayor Pro-tem Marietta Fambro cast the sole no vote. Mayor Pascual Maestas, who will be succeeded by Mayor-elect Dan Barrone next year, was absent.

Fambro’s term also expires at the end of 2025 and she had objected to renaming the park during her bid for Taos mayor this fall.

During Monday’s vote, she told the council she was most concerned about late changes that were made to the final resolution and logistical questions the document failed to address, including how new park signage would be financed and Taos Pueblo’s future involvement in oversight of the space.

“It is not that I feel this is not acceptable,” she said, “but I think that the time frame that we had to review and look at the financial part and the staffing part, I just think we could have tabled it and gone further to get that information, so my vote is no.”

The vote was preceded by more than an hour of presentation by Oswald, who said she motioned to revisit the issue last year after she was contacted by a town resident and “old family friend” to investigate a prior town council’s vote to rename the park in 2014.

“The committee was formed to fulfill a decision that was made in 2014,” she said, “but our work has always been about more than just a name, and we approached this task with care, recognizing the need to address historical harms and foster civic relationships. Our process was designed to be inclusive, transparent and rooted in community values.”

Significant public outcry dogged the town council’s vote to rename Kit Carson Park in 2014 and reemerged in the town after the council voted to revisit the matter late last year.

While councilors in November 2014 voted 3-1 to change the name to Red Willow Park, Taos Pueblo’s tribal government at the time ultimately objected to the change, arguing that the tribe had not been consulted in advance of the vote.

In addition to Chair Oswald, this year’s Kit Carson Park Renaming Committee has met monthly and was comprised of four members, including Taos Pueblo Second Sheriff Jesse Winters, who joined Oswald for Monday’s presentation.

“Thank you for the opportunity to have a chair at this renaming process,” he told the council. “I know that I was basically a bridge between my people and the relationship with the town of Taos and this process of the renaming of the park. It was a long process. I did my due diligence of trying to get my people’s voice.”

While Oswald was designated a non-voting member of the committee, she said she felt there was no conflict between her role as chair, her own personal advocacy to rename the park and her decision to cast a vote regarding the name change Monday.

“When the resolution got written, it got written with consideration that I’d like to vote in the final vote,” she said Tuesday. “I was a non-voting member of the committee, and therefore I don’t see any conflict of interest, because the committee guided their work, and ultimately they chose a name that was given by the Pueblo. So I did as any elected official is expected to do, and I cast my vote.”

At the committee’s final meeting on Oct. 23, Taos Pueblo presented a five-page letter to the town that contained six stipulations. They included a request that the town adopt a formal land acknowledgement that the park is “unceded Tiwa territory,” issue a public apology and rename the park Red Willow Park, among other items.

In response to Fambro’s question regarding whose government would finance projects necessitated by the name change, Oswald said the town would bear full responsibility.

“It is our property,” Oswald replied.

Fambro also raised concerns about whether the resolution’s language regarding ownership of the park was clear.

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“At this time, with some pretty limited time to look at all of this, I do not believe that there is any federal or state statutes that we are running afoul of with this resolution,” Jessica Nixon, the town’s attorney, answered. “However, I do think that there are still questions on behalf of both the public and the town that deserves some consideration and discussion.”

According to the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act of 1965, Kit Carson Park had been so-named since 1965, about 100 years after Carson’s death in southern Colorado on May 23, 1868.

Carson and his wife, Josefa Jaramillo, who preceded the Army scout and Indian agent by just a month in death, is buried alongside him in Kit Carson Cemetery. Several other Taos luminaries of the era were also laid to rest there, including Mabel Dodge Luhan and Padre Antonio José Martínez.

In 1843, the Carsons purchased a home on nearby Kit Carson Road that is now a museum and National Historic Landmark. Carson National Forest, which falls under federal jurisdiction, is also named for Carson.

Renaming Efforts History

Efforts to rename Kit Carson Park date as far back as the 1970s, when protests were held in the area and condemned Carson’s role in Westward Expansion, most notably his leadership during the forced relocation of 10,000 Navajos and 500 Mescalero Apache to an internment camp on the Bosque Redondo from 1864 to 1868.

A sign in the rear of the Town of Taos Council chambers on Monday labeled Carson a “culture killer, slave owner” and perpetrator of genocide, a claim Santa Fe historian and author of the 2006 biography of Carson, “Blood and Thunder,” Hampton Sides, said is not historically founded.

“He was most ferocious in his attack of the Navajo at a time when Taos Pueblo just hated the Navajo, absolutely hated them and feared them, because the Navajo would come down and steal their cattle and sheep and kill people and steal women,” Sides said. “Sometimes you’ll hear the word that he was genocidal, which is just simply not true.”

Fambro noted that, in a town of roughly 5,000 residents and 33,000 in the county, just over 150 people participated in the renaming process.

“With all of the meetings, with all of the panelists and presenters and citizens forums, it’s something like 50. With surveys, that number goes up three times,” Oswald said. “So we had plenty of community engagement.”

Oswald told the Journal it was not her intention, nor was it the committee’s charge, to “relitigate” whether the name of the park should be changed.

“I initiated this process because it was something that hadn’t gotten completed, and therefore my goal was always to complete the process,” she said.