The Silent Cathedrals of Plaza Blanca
June 2021
A Solitary Walk Through Plaza Blanca
We registered to visit Plaza Blanca near Abiquiu yesterday to visit the landscape immortalized by Georgia O’Keeffe as “The White Place.” Plaza Blanca is located on the private property of the Dar al Islam education center, which purchased the land back in 1979. Because the area’s fragile sandstone formations and ecosystem are so vulnerable to erosion and vandalism, the owners require all visitors to obtain a free permit and gate code in advance. Having the code to open both gates, we arrived to find the entire site completely to ourselves, a rare isolation we always love.
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We followed the empty river bed up, admiring this “white city” with its 60-foot-high obelisks and otherworldly spires. One of the massive formations looked exactly like a towering cathedral! Standing among the uneven cliffs, it is no surprise O’Keeffe was deeply drawn to paint this location. It truly felt like a holy, spiritual place.
Dar al Islam generously allows public access under strict conditions, one of the terms of entry is that all photographs must be used for private, non-commercial purposes only. To respect their rules and protect the imagery, I added a watermark to my photos this time.