Throughout the year the Center will host educational programs and cultural events. Plans are underway for upcoming exhibits.

We hope you enjoy your visit and leave with a better understanding of the natural beauty and cultural richness of northern New Mexico.

Visiting Hours: April 1 through Memorial Day: Tuesday-Saturday, 9 am-5 pm, closed Sundays & Mondays. Memorial Day to October 31: Tuesday-Sunday, 9 am-5 pm, closed Mondays. The Center will close October 31 and reopen on April 1.

The Ghost Ranch Piedra Lumbre Education and Visitor Center is pleased to announce its 2008 calendar of community art shows:

April 1 - April 29          Through the Lens -- 8 Northern Photographers 
                                       Opening reception: Saturday, April 5, 2-4 p.m.

May 3 - July 6              Española Valley Fibert Arts Center Show
                                       Opening reception: Saturday, June 7, 2-4 p.m.

July 10 - August 8        Cerro Pedernal Heritage Association
                                       Opening reception: Saturday, July 12, 2-4 p.m.

Aug. 12 - Sept. 13        North Fourth Art Center
                                       Opening reception: Saturday, August 16, 2-4 p.m.

Sept. 16 - Oct. 30         Art Through the Loom
                                       Opening reception: Saturday, September 30, 2-4 p.m.

History

Since its opening in 1959, this facility has been known as the Ghost Ranch Museum, the Ghost Ranch Living Museum, and now the Ghost Ranch Piedra Lumbre Education and Visitor Center.

It was designed by William Carr with input by Arthur Pack, both early conservationists who created the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson. William Carr said, “We built the museum to inform the people of their own country, of its vanishing wildlife, grass, water and soil, its wonders of life past and present, and rehabilitation for the land in the future.”

Arthur Pack initiated a plan that would donate the museum to the U.S. Forest Service in the early 1970s, hoping to preserve the museum. In addition to exhibits on culture and natural history, the museum housed rescued animals that could not be returned to the wild. At the same time, there were certain tracts of land within Forest Service  boundaries whose ownership was disputed by local families who had been inhabiting the land for generations. Ghost Ranch, under the leadership of Director Jim Hall, acted as an intermediary in the ensuing "Land Trade", an exchange of the Museum and surrounding acreage to the Forest Service in return for clear titles for 112 families to the disputed land areas. This "Land Trade" in April, 1975,  was hailed, in the observation of one onlooker, as an instance where "charity kissed justice."

In 1999, the Forest Service decided it did not have the resources to adequately care for the animals and closed the museum. Plans to reopen it with a focus on local culture never materialized.

Through a Forest Service permit, the Center reopened in 2005, under the auspices of the Ghost Ranch Education and Retreat Center.

 Facilities

• The Center is home to The Beaver National Forest, the nation's smallest national forest, comprising only 1.25 acres!
• Within the Visitor Center you will find the Gallery, which features rotating Community Art Shows and a gift shop.
• The Gateway Museum opens a door into northern New Mexico’s rich history and its multicultural residents.
• Exhibits in the Pack House include the Coelophysis dinosaur and Triassic reptiles, geology, flora and fauna, conservation and New Mexico’s train heritage.  Outdoor picnic tables are located here.
• The O'Keeffe Tower houses prints of some of the paintings of the artist Georgia O'Keeffe, painted when she lived at Ghost Ranch. View the spectacular red and yellow cliffs, the subject of a number of her paintings.