This area is steeped in history, legend and myth and Leyendas — the first in our four-part Tradiciones publications — is our modest attempt to tell a few of these stories.

Native American tradition passes along history to younger generations by the telling of stories, but sometimes another version of the facts contradicts those ancestral accounts. One of those …

Aldo Leopold, the great American conservationist, only served with the Carson National Forest a few years. It could be argued his most important contribution during that time was his influence on …

DoughBelly Price was a Taos character who lived from 1897 to 1963. He was a cowboy, chuckwagon cook, bootlegger, writer, and contemporary of Taos legend John Dunn, santero Patrociño Barela, …

The year – 1969. There were three major national television networks. No Internet. No social media. But there was radio. I stumbled onto an audio interview. The interviewer, a nameless DJ with a New York accent. The interviewee was none other than the British painter who’d become — thanks to D.H. Lawrence and Mable Dodge, and her own spirit of adventure — known as a Taos “Modernist,” Hon. Dorothy Eugenie Brett.

The Priest Padre Antonio José Martínez — born Jan. 16, 1793 and died July 27, 1867 — was the very famous pastor at our Lady of Guadalupe Parish for over thirty years and was a pivotal political, spiritual and cultural influence during the transition of power from Mexican governance to the U.S. in the mid-1800s.

Like certain parts of Taos history, the story of the Taos Revolt of 1847 and the fate of the first U.S. civil territorial governor is layered in complexity, contradiction, mystery and violence. What is clear is that in January of 1847, a group of Taos Pueblo and Hispano men attacked the home of Governor Charles Bent, a merchant who was appointed territorial governor the year before. They shot him with arrows and guns until he was dead.

Nestled in the idyllic Santa Cruz Valley of Northern New Mexico is the village of El Potrero, home to El Santuario de Chimayo, a weathered adobe church that receives thousands of visitors a year with details of supernatural phenomena to share, and invocations of gratitude and healing. Lining the smooth adobe surfaces of an adjoining room are abandoned crutches and walking canes – crocheted baby booties, handwritten notes and photographs — physical testimony deemed evidence of the revelat…

The life of Long John Dunn is a study in contrasts and a portrait of resilience.

When he was no more than 12 or 13 years old, a local boy, we’ll call him José, went to the woods fishing with his father and uncle. In an area north of Taos, they drove down a rough road about four miles into an isolated area where not too many people go. The three walked miles into the backcountry just after a rainstorm.

For years it has sat on the side of State Road 68, just south of Taos. At times it has tempted passers-by with its promise of relaxation on the banks of the Río Grande, at other times it has sat vacant, a tribute to better days.

In the ancient desert, under the stars and moonlight of the New Mexico night, a person ran a careful finger down the smooth surface of a rock face. The rock wasn’t the perfect canvas, and the process of creating a picture wasn’t easy, but this ancestor of the Puebloan Peoples was determined to etch their thoughts and dreams, their voice, into the annals of time. Ink would never last through the harsh desert elements and paper was yet to be invented, so the process of the petroglyph was born.

We are up to our necks in ghosts and legendary spirits in Northern New Mexico.

Out of the mouths of former hippy babes comes this history of Fountain of Light, the monthly counterculture tabloid published in Taos from 1969-1970. Jim Levy, editor for the last three issues, and author/journalist Phaedra Greenwood talk a little about the people who founded and worked on this now-legendary review.

— Tradiciones editor Virginia L. Clark

The federal government’s return of Blue Lake to Taos Pueblo not only carries local significance, but marked a fundamental shift in United States government policy toward American Indian people.

New Mexico’s Most Popular Public Official Succumbed to Pneumonia Which Resulted from Influenza,” read the top of the New Mexico State Register on Oct. 18, 1918. Just below, another headline read: “Influenza Spreading Rapidly Over Country.” Yet another headline stated that “Every School in the State Has Been Closed on Account of the Epidemic Previous to the Governor's Proclamation,” with the article also noting that they had converted a Valencia County high school into a hospital for handling the new influx of influenza cases.

Alleged hired killer of Alfred Bent over land grant concocts disappearing act, double-crosses desperado