Georgia O’Keeffe/Ghost Ranch redrock cliffs and clouds | Wikimedia Commons
Georgia O’Keeffe bought a 12-acre parcel at the edge of New Mexico’s Ghost Ranch in 1940 and established a summer home in the landscape that had become an important part of her work. O’Keeffe purchased her own parcel, while the larger Ghost Ranch extended across 21,000 acres around it. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum says her summer house sits about 12 miles from Abiquiú, on the edge of the 21,000-acre property. One of her 1940 works, Red and Yellow Cliffs, Ghost Ranch , is recorded by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum as having been painted during the summer of that year, the same year she purchased the property.
The larger Ghost Ranch was operating as a dude ranch for visitors and tourists at the time of purchase. Her Ghost Ranch house served as her summer home, while she later acquired a property in Abiquiú that became her permanent home. Ghost Ranch also notes that O’Keeffe’s home there is now privately owned and is not accessible to the public. The road leading to the house is restricted as well, although visitors can take tours through the broader landscape associated with her paintings. O’Keeffe also collected objects such as animal bones from the surrounding terrain, some of which later appeared in her work. A private home beside a much larger ranch
Today, both historic homes are owned by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, although only the Abiquiú Home and Studio is open for public tours.
O’Keeffe’s 12 acres were never the whole of Ghost Ranch, as the ranch itself has a separate ownership history. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum says the greater Ghost Ranch was already functioning as a dude ranch when she purchased her parcel, and the larger property is now owned by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), while its facilities and programs have been leased and managed since 2018 by the National Ghost Ranch Foundation, an independent nonprofit. The foundation describes the ranch as a 21,000-acre Education & Retreat Center, and its current programs include outdoor activities such as hiking and horseback riding, along with educational and retreat programs. She eventually made that property her permanent home in 1949, where she lived until 1984. O’Keeffe died in Santa Fe in 1986 at the age of 98, and her 1940 purchase at Ghost Ranch remains a small private parcel within a much larger landscape that continues to operate as an education and retreat center.
Because of its irrigated garden and greater comfort during the winter, the Ghost Ranch house was not suitable for O’Keeffe as a year-round residence, and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum says she purchased a larger house in Abiquiú in 1945, partly. Ghost Ranch continues to welcome visitors to the landscape that O’Keeffe painted, with its tours including areas associated with her work, although access to the former O’Keeffe home itself remains restricted. The Abiquiú property has since become the more accessible of her two New Mexico homes. The museum offers seasonal guided tours of the Home and Studio, while the Ghost Ranch house remains private.
