From houses to shopping malls to hotels – indeed, wherever you go in the SW USA you will see examples, from the good to the clichéd, of “Pueblo Revival Architecture”. Its current manifestation is even called “Southwest Architecture”. At Taos Pueblo you can see the “original” article still lived in by “Native Americans”.

How worthwhile you find the experience will depend on

a. How interested you are in adobe architecture. The basic structures date back possibly 1000 years and are regularly “resurfaced”. Although they are stated to be “multi story” and there are parts of the structures which reach 4 floors you are not actually allowed to climb up as these are private or ritual houses and many of the buildings are single story. The whole structure is a series of interlinked square structures – this is no Shibam or Djenne with mud towers and wonderful shapes

b. How much you “want to get a feel for” Native American culture and how you react to the circumstances under which such a visit takes place. One must have some sympathy for the inhabitants. What do you do if you live in a village of 150 people where hordes of tourists want to come and gawp at you and your houses? Well you charge them quite a lot of money to come in (at limited times), you make them pay to take photos (and try to stop them taking photos of you because otherwise it gets very wearing), you provide lots of “shopping opportunities” and you restrict what they can do and where they can go (because if you don’t you will find people coming into your house as if they owned the place!).

In fact I visited Taos as long ago as 1963 when was probably a great deal less touristy than I suspect it is now. I can’t say that, at a distance of 42 years, I remember the visit as being particularly illuminating regarding “Native American culture” (though in those far off politically incorrect days they were still called “Red Indians”!). The whole “visiting experience” might have been upgraded in the intervening years but I was just left alone to get on with walking around (in unrestricted areas) and the locals kept well away. I have always found visiting US Indian reservation towns a bit like visiting townships in apartheid S Africa. You suddenly seem to have crossed an invisible economic frontier into another country and in 1963 the relative poverty showed – the pueblo had no souvenir shops in those days as far as I could see but plenty of beat up old pick up trucks. Hopefully, “progress” since those days with regard to native rights, the growth in tourism and the building (just outside the Pueblo) of the obligatory Reservation Casino has brought increased wealth to the Pueblo.

The Taos area has long attracted artists (D H Lawrence lived in nearby arty Taos city in 1925 and indeed his ashes were taken there by his wife), new-agers and their ilk. Taos Pueblo supports this culture and the perceived wisdom that Native Americans live in harmony with the Earth and achieve spiritual fulfilment. You may get a buzz from being close to all this. Personally if I had to choose between visiting “Native American” structures at inhabited Taos Pueblo or ruined Chaco Canyon I am afraid I would choose the latter!