The home of Kit Carson, the legendary frontiersman, scout, and military officer who was based in Taos for much of his adult life. The 12-room adobe house dates from 1825 and was Carson's home from 1843 until his death in 1868. The museum inside covers his life — controversial as it now appears — and the broader context of the mountain men, the Santa Fe Trail, and the US Army's campaigns in the Southwest.
Carson is a complicated figure: celebrated as a pathfinder and hero in his own era, he also directed the forced removal of the Navajo in the 1860s, the Long Walk of the Navajo, an event still remembered with pain in the region. The museum addresses this history alongside the frontier romance. The house and its walled garden give a good sense of prosperous 19th-century Taos life.