Laura Gilpin (1891-1979)

The panel leaves out the woman in the car. Gilpin ran out of gas in 1930 about twenty miles north of Chinle with Elizabeth Forster, the nurse who was her companion for some fifty years, and it was Forster who took a field nursing post among the Navajo at Red Rock in 1931. Gilpin's first Navajo portraits came from visits there. Money troubles kept her away for sixteen years after Forster lost the job; she went back in 1950, and The Enduring Navaho followed in 1968. She left 27,000 negatives to the Amon Carter Museum.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Laura Gilpin (1891-1979) An outstanding photographer of the twentieth century, Laura Gilpin is best known for capturing southwestern cultures and landscapes on film. When her car ran out of gas on the Navajo reservation in 1930, she began photographing the local people. She published four books culminating with The Enduring Navaho in 1968. A master of the art of platinum printing, her photographs are found in museums around the world. Official Scenic Historic Marker New Mexico Historic Women Marker Initiative The New Mexico Historic Women Marker Initiative was founded in 2005 by members of the New Mexico Women's Forum in a statewide effort to recognize women's contributions to New Mexico history on the state's Official Scenic Historic Markers. The Initiative ensures that women's diverse histories will be remembered and told, and will inspire and provide a guide for future generations. The 2006 Legislature funded the project.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Palace of the Governors — 16 mi
  The long adobe on the north side of the Santa Fe plaza, called the oldest public building in continuous use in the country, though its own founding date is in dispute.
• Bandelier National Monument — 19 mi
  Rooms carved into soft volcanic tuff in Frijoles Canyon, named for a Swiss scholar who was led there in 1880 by a man from Cochiti Pueblo.
• Fuller Lodge — 26 mi
  The upright-log dining hall of a boys' ranch school, which fed and housed the Manhattan Project after the Army bought the school in 1942.
• Valles Caldera National Preserve — 29 mi
  A crater thirteen miles across, floored with grass, left by an eruption 1.25 million years ago and owned privately for 140 years under a law that called it vacant land.

More markers nearby

• Three Wise Women — steps away
• Maria Gertrudis Barceló, Doña Tules — steps away
• Bicentennial Celebration / La Bajada — steps away
• Amelia Elizabeth White and Mary Cabot Wheelwright — steps away