Having got thus far up the Rio Grande, let nothing deter you from visiting Taos (they pronounce it _Towss_). By automobile it is about 50 miles northeast of Española or you can reach it quite expeditiously by Denver & Rio Grande train to Taos Junction and auto-connection thence about 30 miles to Taos.[10] Situated in a fertile plain, 7000 feet above the sea, in the heart of the Southern Rockies, Taos is one of the most charming places in America. It is in three parts. There is the outlying hamlet Ranchos de Taos; then the picturesque Mexican town Fernandez de Taos, famous in recent years for a resident artist colony whose pictures have put Taos in the world of art; and lastly, there is the pueblo of Taos. From very early times the pueblo has played an important role in New Mexican history. It was here the San Juaneño Popé found the readiest response to his plans of rebellion. Later the location on the confines of the Great Plains made it an important trading center with the more northern Indians. The annual summer fair for _cambalache_, or traffic by barter, held at Taos in the latter part of the eighteenth century, was a famous event, the Plains tribes bringing skins and furs and Indian captives to trade for horses, beads and metal implements. The commercial opportunities combined with the fertility of the soil and an unfailing water supply led to the founding of Fernandez de Taos by whites. In the days of Mexican supremacy part of the traffic over the Santa Fe Trail passed this way and a custom house was here. The ruins of a large adobe church in the pueblo form a memento of the troublous days of 1847, when a small rebellion participated in by Mexicans and a few Taos Indians took place here and the American governor, Bent, was murdered. At Fernandez de Taos, the famous frontiersman Kit Carson lived for many years, and here his grave may still be seen.