| Ghost Ranch El Rancho de los Brujos[1] |
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| Sandstone cliffs along the Kitchen Mesa Trail, in Ghost Ranch. |
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| Coordinates: | |
| Country | United States |
| State | New Mexico |
| County | Rio Arriba |
| Website | www.ghostranch.org |
Ghost Ranch is a 21,000-acre (85 km2)[1] retreat and education center located close to the village of Abiquiu in Rio Arriba County in north central New Mexico. The conference center and lodgings at Ghost Ranch are run by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) but open to the general public.
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Ghost Ranch is part of Piedra Lumbre (Shining Rock), a 1766 land grant to Pedro Martin Serrano from Charles III of Spain.[1] Arthur Newton Pack, the co-founder of the American Nature Association and one-time editor of its Nature magazine[2] (not to be confused with the UK scientific journal of the same name)), bought Ghost Ranch in 1936, and donated it to the Presbyterian Church in 1955.[1]
Ghost Ranch is the subject of many landscapes by the American painter Georgia O'Keeffe, who maintained a summer home there in 1934, then her permanent residence on the property from 1949 until her death. Her ashes were scattered at Ghost Ranch.
200 million years ago Ghost Ranch and the American Southwest were located close to the equator, and had a warm, monsoon-like climate with heavy seasonal precipitation.[3] Ghost Ranch includes a famous palaeontological site preserving Triassic dinosaurs. Fossil bones were found here as early as 1885. In 1947 the palaeontologist Edwin H. Colbert documented the discovery of over a thousand well-preserved fossilized skeletons of a small Triassic dinosaur called Coelophysis in a quarry here.[4] In 2007, fossil remains of Dromomeron romeri, one of the archaic group of animals called "basal dinosauromorphs," were found in the Hayden Quarry.[5] In April 2010, a team of scientists led by Hans-Dieter Sues of the Smithsonian Institution reported the discovery of Daemonosaurus chauliodus, a basal theropod species, at Ghost Ranch.[3] Daemonosaurus existed 205 million years ago, making it a missing link between the oldest known dinosaurs such as Herrerasaurus, which existed during the Late Triassic period in what is now known as Argentina and Brazil, and the more advanced theropod dinosaurs.[3][6]
Ghost Ranch's incredible scenery attracts some of the film industries major movies to be filmed upon the 21,000 acres of the ranch has to offer. Here are most of the movies that have been filmed on Ghost Ranch:
Cowboys and Aliens (film) (2011), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), Brothers (film) (2009), 3:10 to Yuma (2007 film) (2007), Wyatt Earp (film) (1994), Wild Wild West (1999), The Missing (2003), Silverado (film) (1985), City Slickers (1991), All the Pretty Horses (film) (2000), Earth 2 (tv series) (1994 TV Series), Georgia O'Keeffe (film) (2009 TV Movie), The Last Outlaw (1993 TV Movie), The Light That Failed (1939), And Now Miguel (1966) included Ghost Ranch staff members James Hall and Heil Waters in small roles.