The D. H. Lawrence Ranch

May 17, 2025 to May 20, 2025                                        Most Recent Posts:
Taos Valley RV Park                                     The Rest Of My Day at Ghost Ranch
Taos New Mexico                                    Georgia O’Keeffe’s Ghost Ranch Home

SATURDAY MAY 17

It has been very windy every one of the last 5 days since I arrived here.  25+ mph with stronger gusts.  It’s the only downside to New Mexico in my mind.  So windy I’ve had to bring my slides in especially to keep their toppers from ripping off.  Today is the first day I’ve been able to put them out during the day.  Until today, I can  usually, by 8pm, put them out so I can get to my closets.

This morning I was up and out for the Taos Farmer’s Market.  A really  wide variety of things were going on there.  

I definitely knew I was in Taos before I even got fully into the market as there was “Hand Counseling” happening just on the edge as I entered.  Taos pros – is that the same as palm reading?  $12 for “about” 10 minutes. I was SOO tempted but wanted to get on into the market and see if there were important goodies I needed before they all got snatched up.

Of course it was not nearly as large as Santa Fe’s markets but it had an amazing variety.

There were Tamales, tacos and tortas. . . . .

Burro sausage?   WHAT?   I didn’t even ask – Fred and Ginger, NEVER.

And a wonderful desert tortoise we were told was born May 20, 2012

What a gorgeous shell!

The shocking price of eggs  Back in the 90’s when we still had an active farm and laying hens we sold our organic eggs for $1.50- 1.75 a dozen.  

That’s a 400% increase for a dozen.  Gas would have to be $4.60 a gallon to have gone up that much.  Maybe if you live in California it is.  Here in New Mexico I am paying $2.61.

That’s over 30 years.  Have all prices gone up that much? 

Just down the block the difference is about 600%.

People were cueing up for breakfast

Here’s what was on the menu.  Looks like they are out of a few things already.

Yummy pastries at one spot

And the Bread Club at another

Beans and greens and red chile flowers

Music

I couldn’t get a good picture of the Spirit Healing.  There were too many people all around the table.

And as I left Bonnie Bramble had moved her spot but she was still packing them in.   Would you have had your hand counseled??

MAY 20 Tuesday

The group of artists that Mable Dodge Luhan (see my previous post here)  brought to Taos included not only Georgia O’Keeffe and others but D.H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda.

Luhan had purchased the 160 acre property, now known as the D.H. Lawrence Ranch,  in 1920 from its second owners William and Mary McClure. 
The McClures  had purchased it from the original homesteader John Craig in 1893 and had built all the buildings other than what is known as the Homesteaders Cabin which was built by Craig.

Lawrence had arrived in America in 1920 escaping the censorship of his work and potential imprisonment in England.  As an enticement to keep him here, Luhan had given them the property at the foot of Lobo Mountain which Lawrence refused but Frieda accepted.  He subsequently named it Kiowa Ranch for its Native American connections .  Multiple sources say this gift was in exchange for the original manuscript of Sons and Lovers.  A search for the current location of the original manuscript didn’t yield any results so I’m personally skeptical.

Back to the property.  The elevation is 8600 feet and the site lies along an ancient route connecting the Kiowa Indians of the plains to the tribes and pueblos in New Mexico, thus Lawrence’s name in historical homage. Today the trail is used by the Taos Pueblo people to travel to the clay pits.   I didn’t think to ask the caretaker where the trail was and if the it was open to the public.  I am so sorry I did not.  Next time. . . .

It was noon when I finally arrived after having Google Maps, unbeknownst to me, send me in some back way  which turned out to be a dead end after miles of terrible narrow rocky roads which it kept insisting would end at the ranch but did not. 
When I finally gave up deciding I was in the back of beyond and turned around and looked for other directions.  I did finally find  the wide scraped dirt road to the Lawrence Ranch  right off a perfectly State Route 522.    I had wasted over an hour and had already gotten a late start.  The ranch is only open Tues-Thursday from 9:30 to 3:30.   The dirt road is reasonable but it is nearly 6 miles down it to the ranch.

The real road to the ranch   Wish I’d taken pictures of the rugged “path” I was taken down by google.  My poor low slung Honda Accord.  She liked this road much better despite its length.

The property consists of 4 buildings.   The large home in the photo below, which borders the parking area, was built in the mid 30’s at Frieda Lawrence’s request by her second husband  and is not open for view although the brochure says work has begun to restore the building for public use.  I saw nothing that looked like work in progress. 

Since Lawrence never lived there, I wish they would concentrate on restoring the other two buildings which also are not open to go inside.  In fact the only thing you can go into is the shrine she had built to Lawrence when she  moved his body from its original burial place in France to New Mexico. More on that later.

I was met by a very talkative caretaker who gave me a nice color informational brochure with instructions for a self guided tour and then proceeded to tell me everything in the brochure.  It was all I could do to get on with looking around.  I guess he doesn’t see a lot of people here.  There was no one when I arrived and no came while I was there.   He disappeared after that and I couldn’t ask him the many questions that came to mind as I toured.

From the parking lot, I walked by the burial  shrine to Lawrence, saving it for last.

The  first building I came to was a darling little cabin known as the Dorothy Brett Cabin in honor of its occupant during the Lawrence’s stay.  She came with them when they came to New Mexico in 1922.  Also known as Lady Brett, she was the daughter of British royalty but was described as down to Earth and helped with much of the work on the ranch and lived in Taos for the rest of her life.  She was trained as an artist and her works are in the Smithsonian Museum and other regional museums.   She was often described as a Lawrence disciple among other things.   I found it interesting that she was hearing impaired and used an ear trumpet.

The cabin is very small, 9X11 feet, and furnished still with her original round table and chair where she typed Lawrence’s manuscripts.  She was devoted to Lawrence though his feelings for her were described as platonic.  There is quite a bit of interesting reading about the trio of women around Lawrence in New Mexico – his wife, Mable Dodge Luhan and Dorothy Brett.  Brett wrote a memoir entitled Lawrence and Brett:  A Friendship which might be interesting to read.

The room is very small and spartan with the wood stove behind the door in the above picture.  Mighty cold at that altitude in the winter.  There must have been an outhouse but it wasn’t kept or restored for authenticity.

There  must have been a lovely view out the window from the head of the bed but I might have turned the bed around to have my head by the windows.

Leaving Dorothy’s cabin I walked the very short way to what is known as the Homesteader Cabin where the Lawrence’s lived.

When Lawrence and Frieda moved from staying with Mable Dodge to the ranch in June of 1924, there were two dwellings and a small barn.  All of the buildings were in complete disrepair.  Lawrence, 2 Taos Pueblo Indians and a carpenter spent 2 months repairing the buildings so that the Lawrences could live in the big one and Dorothy in the cabin.

The  buffalo you can see painted on the side was done by a Taos Pueblo artist in 1934 by which time Frieda had returned  to the ranch with her second husband.  Lawrence died from tuberculosis in Vence France.

I wonder if it has been retouched in the past 90 years.

The cabin has 3 rooms a kitchen/dining room, a large middle room and a bedroom.  Ponderosa pines cut from the property were used to build this and the one room cabin.   It is assumed the meadow was created when the trees for the buildings were cleared.

 

You can see this plaque just to the right of the door through which you cannot enter the house.

You can see an adobe plaster of mud, straw, and water between the pine logs.  Look at the size of those logs.

Through the window I could see the kitchen/dining room.  Based on the bar across the back, it looks like they allowed entry into the front room at one time.  I laughed when I saw the cardboard Lawrence standing there and wondered what he would have thought.

The larger room had two windows looking out.  These two pictures were taken one through each of those.  I have no idea if any of these furnishings were here when the Lawrences lived here but I doubt a cook stove would have been in a parlor which is what this looks like.

Not sure where the 3rd room, the bedroom is but the bed is here along with the cook stove.  I’m really sorry they don’t have a docent here to answer questions like these.

Turning my back on the house, there in the yard stood the famous Lawrence Tree.  The Ponderosa Pine towers over the homesteader’s cabin where Lawrence wrote.   I took several pictures of it which the sun made difficult as did the height of the tree.  As far back as I could get next to the house did not enable me to capture it from base to top.

I settled for some pictures looking up into its crown as O’Keeffe did and as I often do with wonderful old trees.

When I saw this picture later, I included it because  I wondered what O’Keeffe would have thought of the sun created star during the day.  Her painting shows the stars surrounding the tree during the night.

I wish I’d thought to turn my camera on the angle from which her painting is normally displayed.   Next time. . . .

Georgia O’Keeffe visited Lawrence in 1929 on her first visit to New Mexico. She spent several evenings lying beneath this same ponderosa pine which is depicted in her famous painting to the left, The Lawrence Tree.

Before leaving the tree, I had to give it a hug of course and wish it long life and perfect health.

The roots were so large I had to lean in to keep my feet on the ground.

Leaving the homesteader’s cabin, I went to the fence to look out over the meadow ,which had probably provided the pines for the buildings,  to the mountains.

I read that the meadow is the only open and level ground for miles around.  It was first used for camping by the Kiowa Indians and later had alfalfa and later still 500 white angora goats that roamed the mountains.  It is ringed by a living barrier of pines.  I wondered if, like the fields at home, only mowing it keeps the pines from creeping back in.  The caretaker had disappeared so I couldn’t ask him.

The view of the mountains was wonderful and it appeared the Lawrences had this view until Frieda had the two story home built in the 1930’s.  It took over the view.

Before I returned to my car, I went to see the Memorial built in 1934 when Lawrence’s wife had his body exhumed and returned from France.  She had returned to New Mexico and lived here for the rest of her life.

The white plastered chapel looking building backs into the hill  at the bottom of a rather steep incline.  Perched on the roof peak is a two foot sculpture of a phoenix which was Lawrence’s personal symbol and frequently stamped on the front of his books.  Now that would be very cool to own a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover with the phoenix stamped on the front.

Over the double doors is a rosette window made from an agricultural wheel.

There is a story that Frieda’s second husband who built the concrete memorial sprinkled Lawrence’s ashes into the concrete slab for it.   Who knows?  But it is a nice spiritual feeling space.

D. H. Lawrence has been described as being in love with New Mexico and once wrote in a 1931 essay titled “New Mexico”:

“ I think New Mexico was the greatest experience from the outside world that I have ever had.  It certainly changed me forever.  It was New Mexico that liberated me from the present era of civilization, the great era of material and mechanical development.”

I feel like that quote could have been written here yesterday.