Georgia O’Keeffe’s Ghost Ranch Home

Friday May 16, 2025                                         Most Recent Posts:
Ghost Ranch                              Wandering Taos Part 2: Mabel Dodge Luhan
Abiquiu, New Mexico                      Wandering Taos Part 1:  The Plaza 

Aside:
I hope none of you will have to view this post on a phone.  The photographs will not be what I want you to see.  There are a lot of them.  This was perhaps the two best days of my entire trip west.  And as you may notice it has taken me over a week to go through the pictures and write this. Not to mention how far behind I already am reliving and posting this great trip.  Settle back and enjoy the landscapes of Georgia O’Keeffe.

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I had first learned of Georgia O’Keeffe during one of my summers at Chautauqua in up state New York when the best biography of her by Roxana Robinson was on the CLSC book list and the author came to Chautauqua to discuss it.   I was spellbound by O’Keeffe from that moment on and a trip to her New Mexico Homes was on my bucket list for nearly 30 years.  I had just been to see her Abiquiu home which was magnificent.  See previous post here.

Today was the day I was going to visit Ghost Ranch, one of Georgia O’Keeffe’s favorite places and where she had a home for many years, her first home in New Mexico. 

It was an hour and a half from Taos so I was at the gas station by 7:15 and on the road by 7:30.  I arrived 20 minutes early for my “Walk in Georgia O’Keeffe’s Footsteps” tour.  To say I was excited is such an understatement.  If only David and Carrie and Jodee could have been with me!

Since I was early, I went to see  the rental cottage she stayed in for several years before buying her home here.  With enough money, you can still stay in it.  Pretty sure Georgia didn’t pay prices like this.

I couldn’t figure out a way to see the inside so I just took these photos of the outside.   If only I had a friend or two or three here to split the cost of a night.

Susan was our guide.  Two folks were no shows so our group of 6 turned into 4.  SO NICE! 

Beth was alone like me and Kath and Steven were from England amazingly.  Nicer people you could never meet. Yes that’s an Englishman with a Cowboy hat and boots.

It was a wonderful 3 hours in some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve seen.  No wonder O’Keeffe said she had to have a house here.  Just breath taking.

Susan took us in a Ghost Ranch van about a mile down the dirt road away from the Ranch’s complex of buildings. Our first stop was right beside the road.   We were stopping at spots O’Keeffe had painted..  Susan had 8x10 color photographs of the paintings which she held up and then pointed out the landscape that inspired it.

Or in this case, a single tree.

It was amazing to see what O’Keeffe had included and what she had left out.   Can you see the tree?

Isn’t it amazing how the dry southwest heat has kept this tree almost exactly as it was then.  Although my picture is not at the same angle as the painting.

Throughout what became a 3+ mile hike down mainly arroyos we visited more and more spots O’Keeffe had painted.  And as we hiked always it seemed her favorite mountain Pedernal was in the background.   She was quoted as saying “It’s my private mountain, it belongs to me.  God told me if I painted it enough, I could have it.”  And she did.  There are 29 paintings of Pedernal.

Pedernal has the flat mesa like top.

Most of these paintings were done in the 1930’s and 40’s but the landscape has hardly changed at all  in the 80 or 90 years since.  GOOD GRIEF – 80 or 90 years.

The sun was very bright and the reprints had plastic sleeves so I wasn’t always able to get shots that show the fullness of the colors of O’Keeffe’s art.

Nearly the same spot, totally different painting.

In this landscape, what do you think O’Keeffe painted?   I guessed wrong.

It’s like a zoomed and cropped shot.  There is nothing of the background beyond the trees.

I love the Hoodoos in the background and that’s what I guessed. 

I took multiple shots from different angles of this area trying to imagine what O’Keeffe would chose to paint.

Doing that, I got a bit behind and had to hustle to catch up to our next stop.

I admit, this was a surprise to me.  I glossed right over it.  I think it was the curve.

  I wish I could have written down the names of all these paintings. Next on my list of books to get is one of her paintings so I can sit and look at them to my heart’s content. 

Like O’Keeffe, I was very taken with Pedernal and took distant and zoomed shots as we continued our hike.  It was almost always visible wherever we were.

Near the end of our hike, we came to Georgia O’Keeffe’s Ghost Ranch Home.

She had 2 homes within 12 miles of each other.  She bought the house at Ghost Ranch first.  She purchased a portion of the 21,000 acre Ghost Ranch property, including the house and 7 acres in 1940.  This was her summer home but not suitable as a year round residence.  It is very isolated and accessible only through the Ghost Ranch entrance and gravel roads but is not owned by Ghost Ranch. It has no amenities.

You can barely see the ladder leaning against the back of the house a little way left of the chimney.  O’Keeffee  used this to climb up on the roof and look out over the vast landscape and at Pedernal.  

Better look at the ladder.

This photo of the open central courtyard showing the placement of the ladder to the roof was borrowed from the web as we couldn’t get close to the house or see that side.   I know of no plans to open this home to the public.  But I surely wish they would.  I have the understanding that there hasn’t been funds to restore it properly for the traffic it would have to bear.

Georgia O’Keeffe was also a photographer and the ladders at each of her houses were frequent subjects.

She painted Ladder to the Moon in 1958.  You can see Pedernal on the bottom edge and the moon on the top edge   That’s Beth holding the photo.

O’Keeffe painted many series of her favorite landscapes and particularly Pedernal.     Susan brought two to show us.  As I said before, she did 29 paintings of Pedernal done primarily between 1936 and 1958.

And a third painting

Her paintings are such vivid colors.  I wondered what time of year and what time of day, she painted.  Perhaps at Sunrise or Sunset.  Or if, as she said, she painted what she felt not just what she saw.

Without this tour, I would never have noticed this spot captured in the painting above.

This is the whole scape from our vantage point.

I think  O’Keeffe must have come closer to observe the detail.  It’s amazing what captured her artist’s eye.

Two more paintings of one particular area behind Susan.

All of these were done of the area in the background.

I wondered if she ever painted the Hoodoos.  I couldn’t find the information on line.  But Georgia O’Keeffe created over 2000 artworks during her life, paintings, sketches, watercolors, pastels, sculptures and ceramics not to mention her photographs.   I need some more books.

As we ended our hike and turned back toward the van, I took some shots of the color on the desert floor which I had hardly noticed so focused was I on seeing what Georgia O’Keeffe saw and painted.

It was a wonderful tour, one I would take again despite the price if I am able to return.   Susan was a fantastic guide and knew the answer to every question anyone asked.   Thanks Susan.  I think I might love to do a job like yours here.

I’ll close with one of my favorite pictures and quotes from one of my very favorite artists.

This was such fantastic tour that I devoted this entire post to it.  Next post will be about the rest of the wonderful Ghost Ranch property.

Do not miss Ghost Ranch if you come to either Taos or Santa Fe.  It is more than worth the drive.

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For my memory and those who are readers like me (well maybe not quite such bookaholics), here are the books I have read about Georgia O’Keeffe many of which I spent my months while traveling to and being in the west reading. 

Weekends With O’Keeffe  C.S. Merrill
A Woman on Paper: The Letters and Memoir of a Legendary Friendship Anita Pollitzer
Georgia O’Keeffe’s War Time Love Letters Amy Von Lintel
Alfred Stieglitz: An American Seer  Dorothy Normal
My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz Volume I 1919-1933  Sarah Greenough  719 pages (haven’t finished this one yet)
Georgia O’Keeffe: She Saw the World in a Flower YA Gabrielle Salkon
Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O’Keeffe  Louise Lisle
A Life, Georgia O’Keeffe  Roxana Robinson