The ranch was briefly owned by Mabel Dodge Luhan as part of more extensive holdings nearby, although it had been occupied by homesteaders and several structures existed on the property dating back to the 1890s.

In London, an attempt to lure friends to return to Taos with him brought only one recruit, Dorothy Brett, an artist in her own right and daughter of a lord.

[4] While the couple spent a relatively short time there, the ranch became the only property that they ever owned during their marriage, and it became a place of rest and relaxation, where Lawrence wrote much of his novel St Mawr and began The Plumed Serpent, during five months of the summer of 1924.

[3] The couple returned to the U.S., and by April 1925, they were back at the ranch where they spent the summer, Lawrence continuing work on the novel which became The Plumed Serpent.

Although he never returned to New Mexico, in a letter to Brett in December 1929 from Bandol, France, Lawrence expressed some interest in doing so: "I really think that I shall try to come back in the spring.

After Lawrence's death, Frieda returned to the ranch and lived there with Ravagli, who constructed the white plastered 12 ft. x 15 ft. Memorial building in 1934.

[11] For example, in Spring 1979, the guest book showed the bold, black signature of English novelist "Iris Murdoch, Oxford, England."

The Ranch Initiatives program will seek to place the operation of the property on a firm financial basis and to restore and develop the site so that it can support educational, cultural, and research activities for students, faculty, and the greater New Mexico community.

This mission honors the directives of Frieda Lawrence's will, which stipulated that the property 'be used for educational, cultural, charitable, and recreational purposes.