The museums' extensive collections include five historic properties, artifacts associated with the individual sites' histories and families. These collections were developed over a nearly fifty year period. The museums' five historic properties are both its primary artifacts and most significant interpretive materials. The buildings and their contents represent and convey the entire historic development of the community of Taos. The properties portray the lifeways of the multi-ethnic people of this frontier community from the Spanish Colonial, through the Mexican Republic and the opening of the Santa Fe Trail, to the American Territorial periods, and finally the establishment of Taos as a world renown art colony.

			La Hacienda de los Martinez is one of the few remaining examples of a restored northern New Mexico style, Spanish Colonial period hacienda open to the public. This massive adobe casa mayor, or great house, was constructedc sometime shortly after 1804, by Antonio Severino Martin (later to become Martinez). The casa mayor that Martinez built became the first permanent, year-round mercantile operation in Taos. Summer hours: 9-5 daily Winter hours: 10-4 daily (November-March)
			The Ernest L Blumenschein Home and Museum beautifully represents the lifestyle of the first artists in Taos. Blumenschein arrived, by accident, in Taos in 1898, with his friend and traveling companion Bert G. Phillips. Portions of the thirteen-room home date to 1797, and contain a wonderful blend of European antiques, Spanish Colonial and regional New Mexican furniture along with an extgensive collection of the Blumenschein family art and represevtative pieces by other members of the Taos Society of Artist. The Blumenschein Home is the only home of a society member that is open to the public. Summer hours: 9-5 daily Winter hours: 11-4 daily (November-March)
Kit Carson Home			The Kit Carson Home and Museum is a complex of buildings which includes a portion of the original four room home of Kit Carson and his wife Josefa, an 1855, three-room structure known as the Romero House, and two, 1952 structures that house the museum's retail shop and additional exhibition space. Carson arrived in Taos in 1826, at the age of fifteen, Taos was to be his base of operation and home until just before he died in 1868. Carson became a trapper and mountain man and traveled extensively through out the West. Summer hours: 8-6 daily Winter hours: 9-5 daily (November-March)
Photograph coming			The Morada Centro is one of the most significant religious sites in northern New Mexico. This meeting house for the Penitentes is considered to be one of the oldest, largest and most important of the moradas in the American Southwest. During the early to mid-nineteenth century the Penitente brotherhood grew in power to become a potent social, religious and political force in the isolated frontier communities of northern New Mexico. The Penitentes helped maintain the ethnic identity of the Hispanic culture during a time in which the area was subject to tremendous social, political and economic change from without. The building was used until 1969 when only two brothers remained and negotiation to the transfer the structure to the museums was initiated. At present the Morada houses the museums archival collection. Hours: Open by appointment only. Call: 505/758-0062 or 758-5440
			The Library and archives, which form the basis for the planned collaborative Northern New Mesico Research Center for Taos, contain sections on Native Americans with a specific focus on southwestern tribes, Kit Carson literature and archival materials, history and archaeology of the Southwest, periodicals, research documentation, unpublished manuscripts and family archives. This research center will be a collaborative venture between the Kit Carson Historic Museums and the University of New Mexico's Harwood Foundation Museum. Hours to be announced.
Photograph coming			The Ferdinand Maxell House was built in 1859 and served as a store and trading post during the American Territorial Period. The nine-room house is a classic example of territorial architecture with its uses of milled lumber for floors and exposed, beaded ceiling beams (milled lumber was not available in Taos until after 1850). Ferdinand Maxell and his brother Lucien were the owners of the huge Maxwell Land Grant, a 1,700,000 acre Mexican grant that continues to be a source of controversy for the older Hispanic community. Currently houses Second Phase Gallery.