Old photographs, memorabilia, and assorted trinkets from the frontier era conjure the life of the legendary scout at the Kit Carson Home and Museum (113 Kit Carson Rd., 575/758-4945, 9 a.m.–6 p.m. daily May–Oct., 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Nov.–Apr., $5, $12 family ticket).

The definitive mountain man, Carson was just one of many solitary scouts, trackers, and trappers who explored the American West on foot and horseback. He was an intrepid adventurer who, after a childhood on the barely settled edge of Missouri, as a teenager joined a wagon train headed down theSanta Fe Trail; he arrived in Taos in 1826.

His talent for tracking, hunting, and translating from Spanish and various Indian languages soon put him in high demand. But whether he was scouting for explorer John C. Frémont as Frémont mapped the trails west to Los Angeles or serving as an officer in the Civil War or, less heroically, forcing the Navajos on the Long Walk to Fort Sumner, he used Taos as his base camp and called the place home.

He bought this house in 1843 with his third wife, Josefa Jaramillo; he and Josefa died there in 1868.