Discover how Georgia O’Keeffe’s 1917 detour to Ward, Colorado, led to iconic art and personal revelations, reminding us that life’s unplanned paths often bring the richest outcomes.

In the summer of 1917, Georgia O’Keeffe and her sister, Claudia, boarded a train near Amarillo, Texas, bound for the mountain town of Ward, Colorado. Their destination wasn’t just a change in altitude, it was a shift in perspective.

They came to stay in a rustic cabin above Ward owned by Hazel Schmoll, a botanist and pioneering conservationist. The O’Keeffe sisters tramped the alpine trails, painted the sweeping ridgelines, and immersed themselves in the raw, wild landscape.

One of Georgia’s best-known paintings from that summer captures the quiet strength of the church in Ward, still recognizable today to anyone who’s visited the tiny mountain town perched above Boulder. The image is courtesy of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe.

What many people don’t know is that the tracks on their original route washed out, forcing the sisters to reroute through Santa Fe. That unplanned stop sparked something in Georgia.

In a thank-you note archived at the Boulder Carnegie Library, she wrote that she couldn’t decide whether she liked Ward or Santa Fe best. I own an autographed caricature of Georgia that has something to do with her Whitney Museum retrospective. I’m on a quest to figure out who made the drawing.

That note struck me deeply when I uncovered it during research for a short documentary about her stay. It wasn’t just a quaint reflection. It revealed something universal: that we don’t always choose the path that shapes us.

When the tracks wash out, we are delivered somewhere unexpected. Santa Fe, as we now know, would become central to O’Keeffe’s life and legend. Ward came first. Maybe it opened her up to the possibility of the Southwest.

Maybe it gave her a glimpse of what it meant to exist inside a landscape, not just observe it. Check out a short film. “Cordially, Georgia O’Keeffe,” which imagines what her stay was like in Ward.

Paige Berry as Georgia O’Keeffe on location in Ward, Colorado. Click on the image to watch the short movie.

That’s what lingers with me from the research: the reminder that the places we find ourselves, whether planned or accidental, are often exactly where we’re supposed to be.

Whether you’re a painter with a canvas or a visitor with a backpack, the mountains above Ward invite you to see not just what’s around you, but what’s inside you.

Isn’t that the truest kind of art?

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