Born in 1879, Mabel Ganson was the heiress of Charles Ganson, a wealthy banker from Buffalo, New York and his wife, Sarah Cook. Raised to charm and groomed to marry, she grew up among Buffalo’s social elite, raised in the company of her nursemaid.

Her first marriage, in 1900 at the age of 21, was to Karl Evans, the son of a steamship owner. They were married in secret since Charles Ganson did not approve of Evans, and were later re-married in Trinity Church before Buffalo society. Karl died in a hunting accident two-and-a-half years later, leaving her a widow at 23.

Her family sent her to Paris after she began an affair with a prominent Buffalo gynecologist. In November, 1904, she married Edwin Dodge, a wealthy architect. She was also actively bisexual in her early life and frankly detailed her physical encounters with women in her autobiography Intimate Memories (1933).

Between 1905 and 1912 the Dodges lived near Florence at her palatial Medici villa, the Villa Curonia in Arcetri where she entertained local artists, in addition to Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and other visitors from Paris, including André Gide. A troubled liaison with her chauffeur led to two suicide attempts.

In 1917 Dodge, her husband, and Elsie Clews Parsons moved to Taos, New Mexico, where she began a literary colony. On the advice of Tony Luhan, a Native American whom she would marry in 1923, she purchased a 12-acre property. Luhan set up a teepee in front of her house, drumming each night in an attempt to lure her to him.

D. H. Lawrence, the English author, accepted an invitation from her to stay in Taos with his wife Frieda in September 1922. Dodge later published a memoir about the visit entitled, Lorenzo in Taos (1932).

In New Mexico, Mabel and Tony hosted a number of influential artists and poets, including Marsden Hartley, Arnold Ronnebeck, Louise Emerson Ronnebeck, Ansel Adams, Willa Cather, Walter Van Tilburg Clark, Robinson Jeffers and his wife Una, Florence McClung, Georgia O'Keeffe, Mary Hunter Austin, Mary Foote, Frank Waters, Jaime de Angulo, Aldous Huxley, Ernie O'Malley and others.

Dodge died at her home in Taos in 1962 and was buried in Kit Carson Cemetery. Dennis Hopper bought The Mabel Dodge Luhan House after having noticed it while filming Easy Rider.*

*excerpted from alchetron.com