The first sixteen units of Ghost Ranch Lodge were built in 1941 by Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Pack owners of a well-known cattle and guest ranch, also called Ghost Ranch. This original Ghost Ranch still exists sixty miles north of Santa Fe, New Mexico and is believed by some to be haunted by evil spirits.

One of the "ghosts" on the ranch is described by the locals as a vivaron or snake-like creature, twenty or thirty feet long. Some years ago, this imaginary monster was seen by a sheepherder who had lost his donkey among the badland gullies. In searching for his donkey, the herder came face to face with the "Vivaron" and was so frightened that he ran miles without stopping for breath.

Strangely enough, there is a probable scientific explanation for this sighting. In 1935 some paleontologists from the University of Chicago were staying at the ranch to hunt for prehistoric dinosaur remains. One day they reported finding, at almost the exact spot where the "Vivaron" was supposed to live, the complete skeleton of a Phytosaur, a giant crocodile-like creature that lived millions of years ago. Later that hot summer day, Mr. Pack rode over on horseback to inspect the find when the intense southwestern sun was reflecting from the raw, bare clay in shimmering waves. As he rounded a bend in the gully, the skeleton - some twenty feet long - suddenly came into view. The dancing heat waves made the creature appear to weave from side to side so realistically that it gave the impression of being alive. Was this the same spectacle that had frightened the sheepherder a few years before? Or wasn't it?

In 1947, scientists from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City visited the Ghost Ranch in New Mexico and found a large number of dinosaur skeletons never known to have existed. This discovery was written up in Life Magazine and many other well-known publications.