The Taos adobe where New Mexico's first US civilian governor, Charles Bent, was killed in the 1847 revolt — now a museum with the family's escape hole still in the wall
117 Bent St, Taos, NM 87571
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Small museum admission fee charged at the door. Cash is the safest bet; hours are seasonal, so confirm before driving over.
Access
Limited Access
Single-story 19th-century adobe with low doorways and uneven historic floors; a block north of Taos Plaza on a level downtown street
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1846 · Home and death site of Charles Bent, first US civilian governor of New Mexico Territory · Central site of the January 1847 Taos Revolt · Family escape hole through an interior adobe wall preserved on site · National Register of Historic Places, 1978
Charles Bent was a fur trader and merchant — a partner in Bent's Fort on the Arkansas River — who settled in Taos and married Maria Ignacia Jaramillo. When the United States took New Mexico during the Mexican-American War, Bent was appointed the territory's first civilian governor in September 1846. He held the post for only a few months.
Resentment of the American occupation ran deep among parts of the Hispano and Taos Pueblo population. On the morning of January 19, 1847, that resentment broke into open revolt. A group of men came to Bent's house on what is now Bent Street, forced their way in, and killed the governor in front of his family. Accounts hold that those trapped inside — Bent's wife Ignacia, her sister Josefa Jaramillo Carson (wife of Kit Carson), Rumalda Boggs, and the children — broke a hole through an interior adobe wall and escaped into the adjoining house while the attack was underway.
The revolt spread to other sites around Taos and was put down by US forces over the following weeks. Bent's death became one of the defining episodes of New Mexico's transition to American territorial rule, and his house remained a landmark of that history.
The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 16, 1978. It is now run as a private museum open to the public, displaying period furnishings, family memorabilia, and exhibits on the 1847 revolt. The escape hole in the wall is still pointed out to visitors, and part of the building also houses an art gallery.
Sources
Of all the buildings around Taos Plaza, the Bent House is the one ghost-tour guides return to most, and the reason is the history rather than any single dramatic sighting. A governor was killed in these rooms while his family broke through a wall to survive, and the house has carried that weight ever since.
The phenomenon visitors mention most often is the piano. People in the museum report hearing piano music start up, go to find the player, and discover the room empty. The Bent family's own piano — transported west over the Santa Fe Trail and now part of the collection — sits among the displays, which is what gives the story its hook.
Beyond the piano, accounts are general: a sense of presence in the rooms, cold spots, the ordinary vocabulary of an old house with a violent past. None of it is documented in the way a witnessed, dated event would be, and the museum presents itself first as a history site rather than a haunted attraction. The legend works because the 1847 killing is real and well recorded; the ghost stories are the town's long echo of it, repeated on tours that wind past the house after dark.
Notable Entities
A small private museum inside the adobe home where Charles Bent died in January 1847. Rooms hold mid-19th-century furnishings, family artifacts, Native and Spanish Colonial pieces, and material tied to the Taos Revolt — including the hole the family dug through an interior adobe wall to escape into the neighboring house. The visit is self-paced and takes most people 30 to 45 minutes.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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