Jane Petchesky, who was named a Santa Fe Living Treasure last year for her lifetime of philanthropy, died Wednesday night at her home in El Castillo Retirement Residences after a long bout with cancer. She was 89.

She had moved to El Castillo in late 2008 after donating to the New Mexico Land Conservancy the ranch and hacienda south of Santa Fe that she and her late husband, Gene Petchesky, had owned.

In addition to their civic involvement, the Petcheskys had raised quarter horses at the ranch. For years the couple co-owned and operated The Guarantee store on the Santa Fe Plaza with his sister, Marian Silver, and her husband, Abe Silver.

Jane Wing Petchesky was born Aug. 20, 1921, and raised in Greenwich, Conn. Her father, Andrew S. Wing, was head of the National Victory Garden Institute, which encouraged people to grow their own food during World War II.

She met her husband during a visit to Santa Fe in 1948, while on vacation from a job in New York City as fashion coordinator for Sherbrooke, a raincoat company. In a 2001 interview in The New Mexican following his death, she recalled that they went to a Fiesta party together, during which her future husband convinced her to go dancing with him at "this wild Western nightclub called Lata Burna."

Jane Petchesky, a first-rate horsewoman, also recalled that during a trip she and her husband took to a rodeo in Tucson, Ariz., with Santa Fe saddlemaker Slim Green and his wife, Green and her husband hatched an idea to help found what has become the annual Rodeo de Santa Fe.

During her lifetime she worked on various committees and boards, including the Old Santa Fe Association, the Old Santa Fe Trail Association and the Santa Fe Watershed Association. She also helped come up with the development plan for the Community College District, which included provisions to help preserve open space amid ongoing development of the once-remote area around the Petchesky ranch off Richards Avenue.

The Petcheskys had acquired the 262-acre property in the late 1960s, well before it was enveloped by Santa Fe's southern sprawl, and built an adobe ranch house with views of the Jemez and Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

"I've always been interested in open space and having land around us and keeping open space here," she said in a 2009 interview after she turned over title to the ranch to the New Mexico Land Conservancy. "My philosophy is based on living in harmony with nature."

After her husband's 2001 death following a stroke, she remained on the ranch until her move to El Castillo. Their son, Steve, passed away in 2005.

Scott Wilber, executive director of the Land Conservancy, said Thursday that the organization's headquarters is now housed at the ranch, which the Petcheskys over the years had steadfastly declined to sell to developers. In 2004, he said, a conservation easement had been placed on most of the acreage and a trail easement was granted to Santa Fe County that could one day be linked to a trail network.

Plans for a memorial service at the ranch are pending.