"It's a matter of saving the ranch," Hugh Witemeyer, a professor emeritus at the University of New Mexico and member of the Friends of D.H. Lawrence, told a gathering of preservationists who met in Taos last week.

Many of the buildings at the historic ranch where the once-notorious British author lived for a brief time in the 1920s and was willed by his widow Frieda to the University of New Mexico in 1955 are dilapidated or infested with mice, Witemeyer said at the Preservation 2008 Pilgrimage on Friday, the Taos News reported.

The 160-acre property, near San Cristobal about 20 miles northwest of Taos, was given to Lawrence and his wife, the former Frieda von Richtofen, by the era's hostess-with-the-mostest, Mabel Dodge Luhan, in exchange for the manuscript of one of DHL's best-known books, "Sons and Lovers," according to Wikipedia.

The couple lived at the ranch, formerly known as the Kiowa Ranch, in the summer of 1924, and after Lawrence died in France in 1930, Frieda returned to New Mexico and the ranch, which she bequeathed to UNM in 1955 about eight months before her death, the Albuquerque Journal reported in 2003 -- the year the ranch was placed on both the National Register of Historic Places and the New Mexico Register of Cultural Properties.

Way back in 1998 a UNM alumni board voted against spending any money to restore the ranch, citing at the time a $6 million price tag for restoration, the Journal reported in 2003.

And Witemeyer told the Journal nearly five years ago that there are still people at UNM who think sinking money into restoring the ranch is a bad idea, since Lawrence isn't as popular as he was just a few decades earlier, when thousands of fans flocked to the ranch every summer.

Frieda Lawrence stipulated in her gift of the ranch to UNM that it be used for cultural and educational purposes and that a white concrete memorial to her husband (which may or may not be mixed with his ashes -- the ashes that may or may not have been left on the railway platform at Lamy before someone remembered to go back and get them) be open to the public.

In years past, the UNM-owned ranch was available as a getaway spot for UNM faculty, graduate students, staff and alumni, charging $20 a night for the smallest cabin to the San Lorenzo cabin which can accommodate up to eight people at $34 a night, according to the UNM Alumni Association Web site.

But atop the Web site there is an ominous-looking notice: "UNAVAILABLE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE."

Over the years, UNM has done routine maintenance, but the grounds have become overgrown and the windows and doors of the buildings have become broken and cracked, Patrick Miller wrote for the Journal nearly five years ago.

It is likely, Miller wrote, that in his brief stay in the `20s, D.H. Lawrence himself performed more maintenance and upkeep on the site that UNM has in all the years since.

(Just for the record, we're not that crazy about Lawrence's novels -- the most famous being "Lady Chatterley's Lover," "Sons and Lovers," "Women in Love," "The Rainbow," "The Plumed Serpent" and "Kangaroo." But we still love his travel writing ("Twilight in Italy" may be the best-written travel book ever), his so-called "psychoanalytic" writing ("Fantasia of the Unconscious") and his marvelously intemperate work of criticism, "Studies in Classic American Literature."

But we've never, ever been to the D.H. Lawrence Ranch, even to worship.) 

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