Ghost Ranch
A 21,000 Acre Education And Retreat Centre Owned By The Presbyterian Church Since 1955; Georgia O'Keeffe'S Landscape, And The Site Of The Coelophysis Quarry That Produced Thousands Of Specimens Of The New Mexico State Fossil · Abiquiu, New Mexico
Ghost Ranch is 21,000 acres of banded sandstone cliffs, red hills and cottonwood bottoms between Abiquiu and the Chama river, and it is the landscape Georgia O'Keeffe painted for four decades. She first stayed here in 1934, bought a small adobe house on the property in 1940, and painted Pedernal, the flat-topped mesa on the southern horizon, so many times that she said God told her she could have it if she painted it often enough. The rock is a vertical section through the Triassic and Jurassic, and in 1947 a quarry on the property produced thousands of skeletons of Coelophysis, a small predatory dinosaur that is now the New Mexico state fossil and one of the richest single dinosaur finds anywhere. The ranch has belonged to the Presbyterian Church since 1955 and runs as a retreat and education centre, which means it is a working place with guests rather than a park, and day visitors are welcome on those terms.
280 Private Drive 1708, US Highway 84, Abiquiu, Abiquiu, New Mexico, 87510, United States
The grounds, trails and two small museums are open to day visitors during daylight hours most of the year, with a day-use fee and trail registration at the welcome centre. It is a working retreat and conference centre first, so trails and facilities occasionally close for events, and the museums keep shorter and seasonal hours. Guided tours of the O'Keeffe landscape and the fossil quarry run on scheduled days and book out in summer.