Ghost Ranch book pitch

The Treasures of Ghost Ranch

Ghost Ranch,  now an educational retreat center in the isolated Piedre Lumbre badlands of northern New Mexico, is famous for two things:  a dinosaur and an artist.  The burgundy red hills with grey stripes are fascinating to paleontologists because the 200-million-year-old streambeds hold a treasure trove of Triassic dinosaur bones.  Since the 1930's they have excavated the "blueprint" bipedal carnivorous dinosaur Coelophysis, VanCleavea, and the 20-ft long crocodilian phytosaur (perhaps the source of the local legend of Vivaran, the huge carnivorous snake.)  Those same hills would ensnare the 20th century artist Georgia O'Keeffe:  after one visit in 1934, she knew this was her creative home, and she lived and painted here for the next 50 years.  She would paint Pedernal, the flat ridged mountain 10 miles visible to the southeast, 28 times, saying that "God said if I painted it enough I could have it."

But the story of Ghost Ranch is so much more.  From cattle rustling in the 1880s to movie making in the 1980s and beyond, from a close connection to the scientists at Los Alamos, to visits from Charles Lindbergh (who shot aerial photographs for local archeologists), from conservation efforts to an impromptu piano recital from Leopold Stokowski, the remote sanctuary of Ghost Ranch, with its wild geology, has enchanted and summoned people from all walks of life.  For 30 years a dude ranch for the elite Easterners, this magical place is now home to artists, poets, scientists, environmentalists, hikers from the Continental Divide Trail, campers, and people who want to escape the stresses of modern living.  Is the treasure of Ghost Ranch it's dinosaur skeletons, the olla of gold buried and lost by the cattle rustling Archuleta brothers, the hundreds of paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe, or the shining mica of its mesas, shimmering in the moonlight? And will those treasures survive the politics and poor management of the 21st century?