The people of Taos have always displayed a feisty, if not downright insurgent, spirit. Every uprising that toppled a New Mexican government started here, beginning with the Pueblo revolt against the Spanish colonists and including the assassinations of a Mexican-era tax governor, who lost his head, and the first American governor, who lost his scalp before his life. Living on the edge of the northern frontier of New Spain, Taoseños became accomplished smugglers of slaves, firearms, and other black market goods. As a convenient terminus of the Old Sante Fe Trail, Taos drew loitering rabble-rousers who were overly fond of the dangerous hooch called Taos Lightning. In the twentieth century, a sleepy artists’ colony became a haven for a new kind of revolutionary who dreamed of overthrowing bourgeois values. Author Ellen Dornan delves into the wicked history of Taos, New Mexico.