Carson, Kit, House
Kit Carson Ave., Taos, NMThe Kit Carson House, located on Kit Carson Avenue in Taos, was for twenty-five years the home of Kit Carson, perhaps the most renowned of the mountain men and free trappers who dominated the fur trade of the southwest. Taos in the second quarter of the nineteenth century was rendezvous point and winter quarters for many of the trappers in the west and southwest, who worked a great arc of country from the headwaters of the Rio Grande and the Arkansas River across deserts to the San Juan, the Gila, and the Salt, and the Colorado Rivers. In the process, they opened up trails to California and were the first Americans to make a lodgement there which became crucial to the Americans in the war with Mexico. The Kit Carson House, built in 1825, was purchased by Carson in 1843 when he married Josefa Jaramillo, daughter of a leading family of Taos. To this home Carson returned from his duties as guide for John C. Fremont, as Indian agent, and as army officer in the Indian campaigns. The U-shaped house, built in the Spanish Colonial style, is maintained today as a historic house museum by the Kit Carson Memorial Foundation, Inc.
Local significance of the building:Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1966.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.