Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainTaos's old town cemetery, where local lore points to three sealed graves and the 'brujas' said to lie under them
211 Paseo del Pueblo Norte, Taos, NM 87571
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public park and historic cemetery. Open during park hours; treat as an active burial ground and keep to the marked paths.
Access
Limited Access
Mature park grounds with grass, gravel paths, and uneven cemetery ground
Equipment
Photos OK
Burial Place of Kit Carson and Josefa Jaramillo · Historic Taos Town Cemetery · Public Memorial Park
Kit Carson Park sits just north of the Taos Plaza along Paseo del Pueblo Norte. The grounds include one of the town's old cemeteries, which holds the graves of Christopher 'Kit' Carson and his wife, Josefa Jaramillo, who were buried in Taos after their deaths in Colorado Territory in 1868, along with the remains of other early residents of the community.
The cemetery predates its current role as a memorial park and reflects the layered history of Taos, a town shaped by Pueblo, Hispano, and later Anglo-American settlement. The Carson graves are the best-known burials, but the cemetery contains the markers of many ordinary townspeople from the nineteenth century onward.
Today the site functions as a public park maintained for the town, used for recreation and community events while preserving the cemetery at its core. The park is open to visitors, and the cemetery remains an active and protected burial ground rather than a relic, so the grounds are treated with the care owed to a working cemetery. The Carson burials and the cemetery's age make it a regular stop on Taos history walks and evening ghost tours.
Sources
Alongside its documented burials, the cemetery carries a piece of New Mexican folklore that circulates on Taos ghost walks and in regional ghost-story collections. The tale points to three unmarked graves said to be capped with cement, and holds that the women buried beneath them were remembered as brujas — the Spanish word for witches — in the lore of old Taos. The cement, the story goes, was poured to keep their power from rising.
The motif belongs to the Hispano folk tradition of northern New Mexico, in which the bruja is a long-standing figure of community storytelling. As told today, the legend is a piece of inherited folklore rather than a verified account of any specific person; no documentation identifies the women named in the story, and the 'witch' framing reflects historical superstition rather than fact about anyone buried in the cemetery.
The cemetery's wider reputation rests on its age and its famous graves, and the bruja story is the kind of legend that attaches to old burial grounds. Visitors are best served treating it as folklore — interesting for what it preserves about how the community once talked about death and the unexplained — while respecting the cemetery as an active resting place.
Notable Entities
A free public park north of Taos Plaza that holds a historic cemetery, including the graves of Kit and Josefa Carson and other early Taos figures. Visitors can walk the grounds during park hours; the cemetery is the subject of the town's witch-grave folklore and a frequent stop on local history and ghost walks.
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