D. H. Lawrence Ranch

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The D. H. Lawrence Ranch, as it is now known, was the home of the English novelist, D. H. Lawrence for about two years in the 1920s. The 160-acre property, originally named the Kiowa Ranch, is located at 8,600 feet above sea level on Lobo Mountain near San Cristobal in Taos County, about twenty miles northwest of Taos, New Mexico.

Lawrence and his wife Frieda visited New Mexico in 1922 at the invitation of Mabel Dodge Luhan, a wealthy New York society hostess and arts patron who had taken up residence in Taos and had married Tony Luhan, a native American from Taos Pueblo, . Some evidence suggests that Lawrence and Freida acquired the ranch during a return visit in 1924 in exchange for the manuscript of one of Lawrence’s most well-known novels, Sons and Lovers.

While the couple spent a relatively short time there in the 1920s, it came to be a place of rest and relaxation for them, and it is where Lawrence wrote much of his novel, St Mawr, during five months of the summer of 1924. After Lawrence’s death in France in 1930, it is believed that his ashes were eventually brought to the ranch. Some controversy surrounds this issue, but it is thought that the ashes were mixed with concrete and formed part of the large memorial stone which was placed in a small covered building on the ranch site.

At her death in 1956, Frieda was buried on the ranch property and she bequeathed it to the University of New Mexico, the present owner. The ranch and the Memorial (or “shrine” as it is sometimes known) may be visited. UNM has not kept the ranch as well maintained as many travelers think it should be. There is a guest sign-in book in the shrine, allowing visitors to see who has been there and from where they have traveled.

The Ranch is now placed on the National Register of Historic Places and the New Mexico Register of Cultural Properties.

[edit] External links

• Detailed history of the Lawrence Ranch from UNM’s website
• Lawrence’s Memorial (or Shrine) with photographs
• Mallin, Dea Adria “The Frontier Spirit: D. H. Lawrence in Taos” from The Cultured Traveler website, September 2004; a detailed account of Lawrence in New Mexico
• Brown, Lawrence, “Homage to the DH Lawrence Ranch in Taos, New Mexico “, 1997