Enchanted Circle

Before 1915, getting over Red River Hill was an ordeal that wagon drivers planned their whole trip around. The old road climbed at grades as steep as 27 percent, far beyond what a loaded wagon could safely descend on its own brakes. Drivers coped the frontier way: they cut a log, chained it behind the wagon, and dragged it down the mountain as a brake, trusting friction and timber to keep them alive.

Did you know the village in northern Taos County carried a saint's name for four decades before it became Questa? The place where the Red River meets the high country near the Rio Grande was officially founded in 1842 as San Antonio del Rio Colorado, a name that honored Saint Anthony and the Rio Colorado, the Red River that still runs through the canyon east of town.