Villages of the north possess a personality, charm all their own
Two of the loveliest places on the planet are the town of Taos and the neighboring, millennium-old Taos Pueblo. But they haven’t cornered the market on charm and ineffable distinction.
There are small, quite livable clusters of humanity — nearly a score of them, in fact — radiating in all directions from Taos. The mostly unincorporated, “censusdesignated places” (they have post offices, for instance) have in common only their sweetness of life. After that, they differ.
Driving southeast from Taos on N.M. 76 (known as the High Road), for instance, you’ll hit a winding mountain road through the Carson National Forest and, about 24 miles later, crest into Peñasco, a village sprawled along both sides of the highway. Now turn around, and go northwest on 76 until you spot the entrance to Picuris Pueblo that you missed. The pueblo is Peñasco’s cheek-by-jowl neighbor. Visit Picuris (peekcur-REES) first, and then we’ll have lunch in town.
Picuris Pueblo–Peñasco
A football coach at Santa Fe Indian School, himself a member of Picuris Pueblo, was asked why the Picuris students made tougher, “meaner” players than the kids from other pueblos. “It’s because of where we’re from,” he said with a grin. “Picuris is in a pass in the mountains that everyone came through for hundreds of years — first the Apaches and Comanches, then the Spanish, then the Americans. Everyone wanted that pass. That’s been going at least 800 years — and we’re still there.”
It was the Spanish explorer Don Juan de Oñate who named the pueblo Picuris, but it was called Pikura (“the people who paint”) by its puebloan neighbors. The ancestral home, Pot Creek Pueblo, has been excavated near today’s 1,800-member community (based on the 2000 census).
Picuris is a beautiful, peaceful place to visit, nestled on the Rio Pueblo stream that meanders through the village. Tribal communicants have restored the 200-year-old adobe San Lorenzo de Picuris church by hand. Fishing and hunting are available on tribal land, and you probably will get a glimpse of the tribal bison herd. There also is a pueblo museum and visitors center where you can buy bead work, weaving and pottery done by pueblo members. Think it’s all bucolic at Picuris? Picuris Pueblo also is majority owner of the swank Hotel Santa Fe in the capital city and many of its people work there. Hungry? Peñasco (meaning “Rock,” probably Jicarita Peak that overlooks the village) is a farming community of about 600 people next door to Picuris Pueblo. Unexpectedly, it boasts one of those tiny restaurants that has been “discovered” favorably by many food magazines — Sugar Nymphs Bistro. Chef Kai Harper and pastry chef Ki Holste honed their skills in San Francisco before settling in Peñasco several years ago. They feature some sophisticated fare for this tranquil rural setting, while concentrating on local, preferably organic produce and meats. Cognoscenti rave about the goat cheese salad, Provençal pistou, chipotle pork loin, grilledvegetable lasagna and hand-tossed pizzas. The desserts are delectable, especially the maple pecan pie. Sugar Nymphs is open during the summer for lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, for dinner from 5:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and for brunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Sundays.
Las Trampas
From Peñasco, turn west onto N.M. 76 and start climbing back into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and back into the national forest. You wander past some wide places in the road like Chamizal (“that place where lots of chamisa grows”) with its little, pitched-tin roofs before you reach one of those worldwidefamous places, Las Trampas. Stop here.
If Peñasco is a village, Las Trampas (“The Traps”) is a hamlet, and a hamlet in thrall to a church. Founded in 1751 by 12 Spanish families dispatched from Santa Fe, it is known for San Jose de Gracia, the church built between 1760 and 1776, and considered a model of adobe church architecture.
In 1967, the National Park Service created a National Historic District from the few houses and stores that surround the church. In 1970, the church itself was given National Historic Landmark status.
San Jose de Gracia was restored from a somewhat decrepit condition during the term of President George H.W. Bush and is kept in working order by the descendants of those families, some of whom are scattered in small farming allotments up and down the valley, and some of whom return from cities to help hand-plaster the church when it needs it.
Go inside and rest in the comfort of the highceilinged interior. Look at those old vigas and corbels. Feel the calm. This church was an expression of deep faith and built to last.
Truchas
Truchas means “trouts,” as befits an old village that clings to a ridge of a mesa with good cold mountain streams running nearby. Halfway between Taos and Santa Fe on N.M. 76, it is also halfway between old and new times.
Truchas began as a Spanish land grant in 1754, so it’s appropriate that Robert Redford filmed many of the exteriors for “The Milagro Beanfield War,” his comedy about land-grant struggles, in Truchas. The town’s small traditional adobe homes and tiendas, or stores, remain a draw.
Truchas, which is unincorporated, observes some of the old land grant laws — for instance, cars must share the roads with livestock.
But Truchas has been discovered since the movie and now has absorbed a thriving arts colony and a couple of nearby pocket subdivisions of fancy homes. Several small galleries (which one is open seems to vary by day and season) line the main roads. Whatever the season, Truchas’ beauty remains. The view of nearby Truchas Peak, at 13,101 feet the second highest in the state, is still breathtaking.
Cordova-Chimayó
From Truchas, drive down (literally; the road is a steep mountain descent) N.M. 76 to a turnoff to Cordova, a tiny, traditionally Hispanic village that has produced many of the best pieces of Spanish colonial wood carvings since, well, Spanish colonial days. (Several of the well-known carvers of today are named … Cordova.) Home studios are usually open to visitors, especially on weekends.
Get back on N.M. 76 and keep driving southwest into the last stop on our High Road adventure, Chimayó. This very Hispanic community boasts two distinctions: it is the hub of Spanish-style weaving in the Southwest, and it is the home of the Santuario de Chimayó, “the Lourdes of America.”
Several small weaving galleries and studios can be found immediately on and off N.M. 76. The village has been a center of traditional weaving for centuries, and many of the artists’ works are featured annually at Spanish Market in Santa Fe, which celebrates traditional Spanish colonial arts. Ortega’s Gallery is arguably the most well-known and wellstocked. You’ll also want to wander through the small adobe house next door that has been converted into a village museum — if it’s open. These villages operate on country time.
Then turn south on County Road 98 to try a delicious restaurant, El Rancho de Chimayó, which offers a wide variety of New Mexican traditional foods and some of the best margaritas around in a cheery, bustling outdoor patio — or more tranquil dining inside the old adobe farmhouse. El Rancho can also put you in touch with several newly opened bed-and-breakfast places along CR 98 as well, in case you want to hang around a while.
Chimayó, by the way, is generally considered a transliteration of an unknown Indian word. However, it may also be from the indigenous Spanish word chimajá, a reference to a wild parsley used for medicinal purposes.
Healing is certainly a large part of what Chimayó is about. The Santuario is a must on your to-do list. Its main claim to fame, of course, is the “healing dirt” that is credited with cures for everything from mental illness to polio over the last century and a half.
The Rev. Casimiro Roca, the Catalonia-born priest who has presided over the shrine for nearly 50 years, says it is not the dirt that is holy, but the strong faith that brings people to the Santuario by the thousands each year. (More than 10,000 annually visit on one day alone, Good Friday, a day of traditional walking pilgrimages among the Catholic faithful of northern New Mexico.) And just north of the Santuario, you’ll find High Road Marketplace, a nonprofit community store featuring the traditional and contemporary arts and crafts of the high road artisans.
To the mountains
If it’s hot in Taos, it’s hot in every “flatland” in New Mexico. That’s when people head to the mountains, either north to Red River or east to Angel Fire and Eagle Nest. These are not sweet, traditional Hispanic villages. These are Anglo villages, settled and used as summer lodging by generations of beauty- — and outdoor fun-seeking — Texans, Oklahomans, Kansans and other folk who appreciate a good mountain.
To get to Red River, drive north from Taos on U.S. 285 toward Questa and turn off to the northeast on N.M. 38. Red River, a cool mountain retreat in summer, is a ski resort in winter, and one of its summer charms is riding the ski lift up the green slopes.
The place looks like a frontier town out of the movies, all boardand-batten and even log-cabin style buildings, with more than 20 lodging offerings and several condo units. It’s a thriving town. There are a couple of hair salons, massage therapists (in New Mexico, massage therapy — the legitimate variety — is a prosperous industry, with all massage therapists having to be examined and licensed by a state board), restaurants, galleries and several venues of family entertainment.
The mountain-ridge villages of Eagle Nest, which borders a state lake, and Angel Fire, which borders a championship golf course and winter ski area, can be found by driving N.M. 38 east out of Red River and hooking up with U.S. 64 that runs from Taos to Eagle Nest. These villages are frankly tourist and summerhome oriented places, with plenty of planned activities and entertainment.
But there is one much more poignant place to visit in the Enchanted Circle (as the Chamber of Commerce types call the loop between the Anglo villages). That is the Vietnam Veterans National Memorial.
The memorial, which is next to Angel Fire, is a tribute to the Vietnam-era vets all right, and even more a tribute to a father’s heartbroken love for his son, fallen in that conflict.
The memorial, a shrine that rises dramatically from a hillside overlooking a mountain meadow, was designed and mostly constructed by Dr. Victor Westphall as a memorial for his son, 1st Lt. David Westphall, who was killed in Vietnam in 1968.
Completed in 1971, at first it was a privately owned memorial, open primarily to Vietnam vets. The Westphall family used David’s insurance policies to build what they called the Peace and Brotherhood Chapel and to create a foundation to support it.
Then the vets started bringing their own contributions, like a sculpture called “Dear Mom and Dad” donated by Taos artist Doug Scott, photographs and poems.
The vets began clamoring for more official status for the memorial. In 1986, a 6,000-squarefoot visitors center was completed to hold a media room plus all the memorabilia, art and other offerings, and in 1987, Congress recognized the site as a memorial of national significance.
The state of New Mexico established a state park around the memorial, the first and so far only state park in the nation dedicated to Vietnam vets. The center and gift shop are open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, and the chapel is always open. It is a place of personal inspiration and reflection on the costs and horrors of war, according to the memorial’s dedication.
To the west
Traveling west of Taos, you’ll have to cross the Rio Grande Gorge, preferably on the suspension bridge on U.S. 64 west that crosses one of the most stunning river canyons in the country.
Just west of the bridge, turn off to the north to visit one of the three “earthship colonies” in Taos County. This colony, the oldest earthship community in the county, is composed entirely of earthships. They’re glorified dugouts, to anyone familiar with pioneer history: houses bermed into rises in the ground, with only a southern exposure left open. These particular earthships also incorporated recycled automobile tires packed with dirt into those exposed southern outer walls.
Why build like this? For the same reason the pioneers used the techniques. The houses heat mostly with passive solar gain (in fact, if not properly vented they can get way too hot in summer). With the earth’s protection, they’re warm in winter and cool(er) in summer. The homes are almost completely self-sustaining.
At the end of the subdivision is a sample earthship where you can learn about the construction and other sustaining practices, including the use of composting toilets and the utilization of gray water from sinks and bathtubs to irrigate personal vegetable plots. Electric power comes from solar panels and wind generators.
Then back to U.S. 64. On you’ll go through rolling pastureland to Tres Piedras (“Three Stones”), which is a tiny settlement at the crossroads of U.S. 285 and U.S. 64. Its environs host the remnants of logging and cattle ranching enterprises, leftover hippies, and suburbanites still enjoying the slow pace of life.
Admire the strange, meltedrock formations in the area and then admit what you really came for — that great, all-American food at the one eating house in Tres Piedras, an old diner called … well, The Diner. How quaint? Not really; The Diner just picked up a rave review in Saveur magazine as an example of the great road food available in New Mexico. But we want to move on to Chama, taking U.S. 64 to its merger with U.S. 84 at Tierra Amarilla.
Ah, Chama. Generally the coolest temperatures in the state. In winter, downright cold. In summer — wonderful. Chama is a place of mountain lodges, fishing, hunting, horseback riding and the Cumbres (“summits”) & Toltec (Mexican proper name) Scenic Railroad, one of the most delightful scenic railroads in the country.
Narrow-gauge steam locomotives pull passenger cars and flatbed viewing platforms from Chama to Antonito, Colo., every day from late May to October. The views are stunning at any time of year. The train stops halfway for a box lunch in a mountain meadow.
But there is plenty more to do in Chama, including a visit to the nearby Edward Sargent Wildlife Refuge, and shopping and dining in the little town’s galleries and restaurants, like Marion’s, across the street from the railroad station.
The Elkhorn Lodge offers a chuck wagon show on weekends, and kids stay free. There’s plenty of lodging, if you make reservations, and that way you can make a leisurely trip back to Taos the next day.
Backtrack to Tierra Amarilla (“yellow earth”), where you joined U.S. 84 on your journey to Chama. Tierra Amarilla itself is so tiny that it’s hard to believe it’s the county seat of the huge Rio Arriba County that stretches northward from Española.
That ancient-looking county courthouse has been the site of plenty of drama over the last century or so, including the uprising of Alianza Federal de Mercedes, a land-grant activist group led by Reies Tijerina in 1967. Blood was shed. Hostages were taken. Activists eventually went to prison. This is a passionate place.
But a peaceful, land-loving place as well. These days Tierra Amarilla is best known as the home of Tierra Wools (actually in the neighboring Los Ojos, a hamlet a few miles away), a cooperative that produces a large amount of organically grown wool each year.
To support the wool cooperative, local farmers formed Ganados del Valle (“Livestock growers of the valley”), a nonprofit agricultural and economic development corporation, to bring back the hardy churro sheep that the Spanish introduced centuries ago. Ganados members now sell organically grown lamb throughout the state, usually at farmers’ markets but also online.
Under a worker-owned corporate title, Los Ojos Handweavers, L.L.C., local weavers sell their hand-woven tapestries, pillow covers, jackets, ruanas (open ponchos) and table goods in a renovated old adobe general store. While the yarn spinners use mostly synthetic dyes, about 10 percent of the yarn is dyed the old way, with plant dyes like chamisa, cota and yerba de la negrita.
This is the place where all the traditions of northern New Mexico meet: the respect for the land, the love of humanity, the intimacy, the passion and creativity, the color and charm. Visit Los Ojos and you will come away changed.
Northern excursion
Sugar Nymphs Bistro 5046 N.M. 75, Peñasco (575) 587-0311
Ortega’s Weaving Shop & Gallery 53 Plaza del Cerro (CR 98/N.M. 76), Chimayó (877) 351-4215; ortegasweaving.com
Rancho de Chimayó CR 98, Chimayó (505) 351-4444
High Road MarketPlace North of the Santuario, Chimayó (505) 351-1078
Vietnam Veterans National Memorial P.O. Box 608, Angel Fire NM 87710 (575) 377-6900
The Diner U.S. 64 and U.S. 285, Tres Piedras (575) 758-3441
Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad Chama (888) 286-2737; cumbrestoltec.com
Tierra Wools & Los Ojos Handweavers 91 Main St., Los Ojos (888) 709-0979; handweavers.com
