Ghost Ranch subject of Jan. 31 Travel Talk at county library

Thursday, January 26, 2017

Tuesday, Jan. 31, DePauw University students returning from a three-week Winter Term visit to the Ghost Ranch will share their experiences in a 6-7 p.m. program at the Putnam County Public Library, 103 E. Poplar St., Greencastle.

Students will discuss their immersive experience in canyon country that included courses in Pueblo-style beadwork; Rocks, Ruins and Bones; Desert Light digital photography; and Writing the Southwest.

Situated near Abiquiu, N.M., the Ghost Ranch is a place of magnificent natural beauty, comprised of deep multicolored canyons and bluffs. Its rocks span 130 million years of ancient geological history, with fossils that illuminate the beginning of the Age of Dinosaurs in North America.

Millions of years after the dinosaurs, Navajos and various other tribes roamed the valley, then Spaniards settled the land, before the cattle rustlers, the wranglers, and the dudes made this area their home.

Arthur Pack, one of the country’s first environmentalists, bought the Ghost Ranch in 1936.

Scientists took respite time there from the stresses of building the nuclear bomb at Los Alamos. Famous guests have included Charles Lindbergh, Ansel Adams and John Wayne.

Pack and his wife Phoebe gave the ranch to the Presbyterian Church in 1955 and even though Georgia O’Keeffe, who had purchased a piece of the ranch from Pack, wanted it for herself, she eventually became friends of the first director of Ghost Ranch, Jim Hall.

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