In O'Keeffe's Footsteps: Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu

Our Desert Divas group at the Ghost House at Ghost Ranch, where O'Keeffe first stayed.

Our first Desert Divas destination today was Ghost Ranch, O'Keeffe's treasured original home in New Mexico. O'Keeffe first visited Santa Fe in 1917 with her sister Claudia. "From then on, I was always on my way back." In 1929 she visited Dorothy Brett and Mabel Dodge Luhan in Taos. In 1934 O'Keeffe discovered the dude ranch of Arthur Pack and stayed the entire summer in the Ghost House. In 1940 she bought the house Rancho de los Burros at Ghost Ranch. The house is now owned by the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum but it is not open to the public.

Pedernal

"It's my private mountain. God told me if I painted it often enough I could have it."

Georgia O'Keeffe

Supposedly this is one of the most recognized mountains in the world because of O'Keeffe's paintings.

Pine Cottage, one of the places one can stay at Ghost Ranch.

At the Ghost House, where O'Keeffe first stayed at Ghost Ranch.

After a quick look around Ghost Ranch, we headed for the Abiquiu home of Georgia O'Keeffe. I don't have any photos to share because you cannot take photographs, draw, or take notes at the house. A van drives you from the Abiquiu Inn up to the house and your guide takes you around and through the house on an hour tour. Though you can't go in every room, the large picture windows allow you to see inside the house. The house is left pretty much as it was when O'Keeffe was alive. 

Her bedroom at the corner of the house, the last room you see on the tour, commanded the best view of the road below and the mountains beyond.  The adobe walls are a dark gray, the bed is covered with a white cloth, and the carpet is light gray. Two glass walls meet at the outside corner. She only had what she needed.