The High Road to Taos

Visitors to Santa Fe and Taos can enjoy the looping "High Road" of northern New Mexico, dividing the trip into two loops over State Road 76. The Santa Fe visitor can do a west to east loop from Chimayo before ascending to the forest and the Taos visitor can travel north to south along the Sangre de Cristo range before descending into the Chimayo Valley.

Either way, the traveler is in for a delightful visual treat. Forests, and beautiful high desert scenes accompany the many outstanding art galleries in the villages of Chimayo, Truchas, Cordova, and Ojo Sarco along the way. And be sure to visit the Santuario de Chimayo, known as the Lourdes of the Southwest. It was built in 1813 and is a pilgrim destination year round because of the power of the "healing earth" found there.

Don't miss the annual High Road Art Tour 2007, September 22 & 23 and 29 & 30. Visit the open studios and gallery arts of these mountain villages between Santa Fe and Taos.


Dixon ~ Rinconada ~ Embudo

The cluster of tiny farming communities, Rinconada, Embudo, and Dixon, halfway between Taos and Española, rarely appear on maps, and you can miss them if you're not paying attention, but today there must be more artists and artisans, per capita, living and working in the area than anywhere else on earth.

For many reasons, artists and craftspersons have always been drawn to live and work in these arroyos, mesas, and mountains. Indeed, a startling number of galleries offer year-round representation to the many accomplished artists and artisans nearby.

The "Dixon-Rinconada-Embudo Triangle" might not show up on the charts, and you can miss it if you blink, but the powerful confluence of creative forces makes it an area of fertile exploration for the artist and visitor alike.

This fall, be sure to attend the annual Dixon Studio tour, to be held November 3 & 4, 2007.


Madrid

There are very few places where the Old West is still alive and well—and Madrid is one of them. In Madrid, art, history, and oddity abound. Established as a coal-mining town in 1906, it dwindled to near ghost-town status after the discovery of natural gas, and is now maintains its lure as a quirky art community.

There is very little that is traditional about the one-mile art scene of Madrid. Set up in historic and often brightly colored miner's houses, the galleries display everything from wearable, traditional, and contemporary art. To say that Madrid is a quaint, art town is true but it doesn't quite encapsulate all that the town is—and maybe trying to explain it is against everything that the locals believe in, but in flexible grammar, it's an art lovin, dog-lovin, hippie-lovin, blues-lovin, coal-minin town in one of the most hauntingly beautiful places in all of New Mexico.

Madrid is located on the historic Turquoise Trail just south of Santa Fe.