Taos County launches Cultural Treasures mapping to guide development

Taos County is beginning a cultural and outdoor asset mapping project intended to help align future growth with local heritage and community values, county officials said. Jessica Stern, Taos County economic development director, said the project will collect information on physical places, histories, languages and people that county leaders can use when planning development.

Stern said the county has seen recent population growth and limited new housing, and officials want to identify “spaces and places and stories and people and treasures, that if they go away, we will lose what makes this place attractive.” She said the county intends to use the data to inform economic development plans and, potentially, land-use regulations.

The project was selected for a new national cohort funded by the U.S. Economic Development Administration. Stern said Taos County is hosting a two-and-a-half-year fellow through the Economic Recovery Corps; Contessa Trujillo, the fellow, said she will lead the Cultural Treasures project in partnership with county staff and an advisory group. “I am an Economic Recovery Corps fellow, and I am working with Taos County, my host, on the Cultural Treasures project,” Trujillo said.

Trujillo said the study will document both tangible assets — physical places and spaces — and intangible assets such as histories, languages and people who hold cultural knowledge. She said the advisory group includes people from across Taos County who represent the area’s diversity and who helped shape the project’s focus. “Not only uplifting those people, but really bringing them into these spaces to have that knowledge and to have that storytelling,” Trujillo said.

Stern described a public, GIS-based map that will allow users to click on identified assets to learn about them; she said the map will be available to policymakers, educators, cultural institutions and the public. Stern also said the county hopes the mapping will strengthen community ties by prompting conversations about what residents consider valuable and vulnerable.

The project team named a few local places and traditions as examples of the kinds of assets to record, including Taos Plaza and the Martinez Hacienda, which speakers cited as sites of historical and cultural importance. Laura, a member of the project team referenced in the discussion, provided staff support for resourcing the advisory group, Stern said.

No formal ordinance, zoning change or regulatory decision was made at the meeting. Officials described the mapping study as an information-collection and planning tool; Stern said the results “could” inform specific land-use regulations but did not identify any committed regulatory action or timeline for such changes. The transcript did not specify a date for when the GIS map will be released or when any policy changes might be proposed.

Project details given in the meeting include the fellow’s two-and-a-half-year term and the project’s dual focus on tangible and intangible cultural assets. Quantitative population figures cited during the presentation included about 1,700 new residents between 2019 and 2023 and roughly 175 additional housing units; the speaker described Taos County as a small county of “about 35,000 people.” The county did not provide documentation in the meeting to verify those figures.

The Cultural Treasures mapping is a planning initiative led by county economic development staff in partnership with the EDA-funded cohort and the Economic Recovery Corps fellow. Officials said they plan to use the collected information to better align economic development with the county’s cultural heritage and environmental values, and to make the results accessible to the public and policy makers.