Ghost Ranch

After our time floating down the Rio Grande, we drove a little longer and then made a stop at the famous Ghost Ranch. I had been excited about this part of our itinerary for a while, Ghost Ranch was made famous when artist Georgia O'Keeffe visited here and then eventually bought quite a bit of the land and permanently moved here. So many of her beautiful paintings are of this place, I was excited to learn more about that.

I didn't know much about Ghost Ranch before our visit, I mainly only knew about it's history with Ms. O'Keeffe but there is much more to it than that. It's history in a nutshell,

"Dinosaurs once walked the soggy wetlands that became the arid high desert of Ghost Ranch. Millions of years later Navajos and various other tribes roamed the valley. The Spaniards settled here and then came the cattle rustlers, the wranglers and the dudes. Arthur Pack, one of the country’s first environmentalists, bought the ranch and later, sold a little piece of it, seven acres, to Georgia O’Keeffe. Scientists took respite time here from the stresses of building the nuclear bomb at Los Alamos. Famous guests have included Charles Lindbergh, Ansel Adams and John Wayne."

"When the cattle rustlers were hiding their stolen goods in the box canyon alongside Kitchen Mesa, they discouraged their neighbors from looking around by spreading the rumor that the land was haunted by evil spirits. “Rancho de los Brujos” it was called, “Ranch of the Witches,” which naturally evolved into Ghost Ranch. The turn-off to Ghost Ranch was marked by an animal skull long before Arthur Pack bought the ranch in 1936. When Georgia O’Keeffe came looking for the ranch she was told to watch for the skull on a fence post. O’Keeffe made a drawing of an ox skull and gave it to Arthur Pack; he promptly adopted the artwork as the logo for Ghost Ranch."

Our tour covered a lot of the ranch's history, we were divided up into three groups and made rotations between the Paleontology lab, the Anthropology Museum, and a Georgia O'Keeffe landscape tour.

Our group started at the Paleontology lab, I am fascinated by dinosaurs so I was excited to learn about their time at Ghost Ranch.

A twelve-ton block of mudstone, is currently undergoing preparation as the centerpiece of the museum exhibits.  A new discovery from the preparation of this block is the first complete skeleton of strange armored swimming reptile, Vancleavea. Both a cast of this unique skeleton and a life-size model of the bizarre animal are on exhibit.

 The museum focuses on the fossils and the environment of the late Triassic Period between 200 and 220 million years ago at the Dawn of the Age of Dinosaurs. The Coelophysis Quarry is a National Natural Landmark as designated by the National Park Foundation. 

Coelophysis, the New Mexico state fossil pictured below, was found here in 1947.

The Canjilon Quarry, discovered in the 1920s on U. S. Forest Service land adjacent to Ghost Ranch, has produced some of the best skeletons of both the armored herbivorous aetosaurs and also skeletons of phytosaurs the giant crocodile-like predators of the Triassic swamps. 

Then our group moved forward in time from the Triassic Era which was 200 million years ago, to the Pueblo-Indians that arrived here 100,000 years ago.

The Museum of Anthropology at Ghost Ranch displays ancient artifacts from Paleo-Indian culture, 10,000 years ago, through ancestral Puebloan times to present time pottery and weavings from local Pueblos. 

Our last rotation was my favorite, the Georgia O'Keeffe landscape tour. We traveled by bus to a restricted area of Ghost Ranch where O’Keeffe lived and painted many of her best-known landscapes. Stops were made, where we disembarked to take in the fresh air, beauty and perspectives that O’Keeffe found so inspiring. Our guide told us stories of O’Keeffe and her life at the ranch as she showed us pictures of her paintings.

Our guide would show us an O'Keeffe painting and then point to where they believed it was painted on the ranch. I found it incredible they were able to pinpoint where some of these paintings were most likely created, as O'Keeffe was known for taking a small detail from a landscape and making an entire painting out of it.

A good example is the painting of this tree,

This is what we saw out our window as our guide pointed out this was the area where this painting was most likely created, if you focus in on that tree at the bottom of the mountain, it looks pretty identical to O'Keeffe's painting.

Another example ...

This painting most likely is of that small shrubbery to the right of those water marks running down the foreground.

Our guide showed us examples of how O'Keeffe would often paint the same landscape several times from different angles, accentuating different details.

When you paint a landscape like O'Keeffe, zooming in on things like cracks in the mountains, withered up trees, and small hills, the possibilities are endless. You could paint the same location forever and never have the exact same painting twice.

This was one of my favorites, I can totally see some of the little details O'Keeffe painted that make this spot identifiable as the subject of her painting. We were even there at a time of day when the sun was behind the hill creating that halo of light O'Keeffe captured in her composition. 

On our drive back to the main area of the ranch, we passed by the house O'Keeffe lived in during her time on the ranch. 

"As soon as I saw it, I knew I must have it," said Georgia O'Keeffe of the simple adobe house at Ghost Ranch, her first residence in her beloved New Mexico. O'Keeffe first stayed at the 21,000-acre dude ranch in 1934, having already spent several summers in northern New Mexico, captivated by the piercing sunlight, expansive skies and stark beauty of the high-desert landscape that have long attracted artists to the region.

Here in this unpretentious, U-shaped structure, situated in a remote area of the ranch, O'Keeffe spent each summer and fall of most of the last 40 years of her long and prolific life. (She died in 1986 at the age of 98.) Its adobe walls seemingly an extension of the earth itself, the Ghost Ranch house nurtured her love of nature. Its windows frame views of majestic cliffs and mesas. O'Keeffe expressed her enthusiasm for her surroundings in a 1942 letter to the painter Arthur Dove:

"I wish you could see what I see out the window—the earth pink and yellow cliffs to the north—the full pale moon about to go down in an early morning lavender sky . . . pink and purple hills in front and the scrubby fine dull green cedars—and a feeling of much space—It is a very beautiful world."

Images and news articles about O'Keeffe were passed around on our drive.

We also passed by a fashion photo shoot, which apparently happens on the ranch all the time. This shoot looked like a lot of fun with a vintage, light blue car contrasted against the backdrop of reds, oranges, and yellows. I can't remember the exact company that was out shooting, but it was a well known company like J Crew or Banana Republic or something like that.

Then it was time to say goodbye to this magical ranch and finish the rest of the drive to Santa Fe. We were driving at the most gorgeous time of day where the landscapes were drenched in golden sun light. Here are some of the views I saw out my window...