| Philmont lies on part of a land grant given to Carlos Beaubien and Guadalupe Miranda by the Mexican government in 1841. Mountain man Lucien Maxwell founded a colony on the grant on the Rayado River in 1848. A year later he was joined at the settlement by frontiersman Kit Carson. In 1950 the Boy Scouts of America constructed an adobe muse um at Rayado to serve as an interpretive area to portray its history. It was named in honor of Kit Carson. The Kit Carson Museum is located seven miles south of Philmont's headquarters at to original site of the Rayado Colony at what is now known as Rayado Camp, the museum is built in the style of Mexican Haciendas of the middle 19th century. The rooms of the museum are furnished to the period of the 1850s when frontiersman Kit Carson and Lucian Maxwell carved out a wilderness ranch there along the Santa Fe trail.
Staff at Kit Carson Museum dress in period clothing and demonstrate frontier skills and crafts like blacksmithing, cooking, shooting, and farming. Each room in the Museum is outfitted with reproduction furniture and objects typical of New Mexico in the 1850s. The Rayado Trading Company, located at the Museum, sells books, maps, reproduction tools and equipment, moccasins, and blankets.
Kit Carson Museum is located seven miles south of Headquarters. Bus transportation to and from the Museum is available from Headquarters at 3:00pm each day. Tickets may be purchased for a nominal fee from the Camping Registrar. Large groups should schedule with Logistics Services before starting for the Museum.
Rayado is a certified site on the Santa Fe National Historic Trail. |
