Summer season of Love: Two Sonoma Communes’ Psychedelic Rise and Fall
Editors word: Invoice Wheeler, founding father of one of many communes, died Jan. 16, 2018 on the distant Occidental-area ranch that remained his dwelling.
Early one summer time night in 1966, a bunch of artists sat within the entrance room of musician and counterculture pioneer Lou Gottlieb’s modest ranch home on Graton Street close to Occidental. Having simply concluded a 10-day brown-rice quick, Gottlieb’s assembled friends — a fellow musician, a instructor, two theater artists, a author, a filmmaker and a poet — silently handed round White Lightning LSD tabs and slipped them onto their tongues.
As their senses opened and intensified, they wandered outdoors, strolling the gently sloping hills, meadow and redwood forest that made up Gottlieb’s property. There, every little thing got here alive — the scent of ripening apples, the whir of bugs, the altering colours of the sky. Hours later, their host served them omelets, and avant-garde musician Ramón Sender learn aloud from “Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism.”
The phrases appeared written only for them. Nothing of significance occurs by chance, they realized. That they had been drawn to the appropriate place by the appropriate want. With these individuals, whose aspirations had been like their very own, they felt they might rework the world.
From 1966, because the hippie scene reached its zenith, by way of 1973, when it crashed and burned, rural Sonoma County skilled its personal psychedelic rise and fall.
Two west county properties, Gottlieb’s Morning Star Ranch and Invoice Wheeler’s Wheeler Ranch, turned dwelling to a shifting inhabitants of younger individuals dissatisfied with the world they’d inherited and decided to create a greater one. They modified the tradition in methods nonetheless evident, particularly in that a part of the county, and known as into query simply what constitutes freedom.
On the core had been two vastly totally different males whose willingness to share all they’d modified Sonoma eternally.
Lou Gottlieb, 43 in 1966, tall and lanky with a pointy wit, owned 31 acres outdoors of Occidental. He was a celebrated bassist and singer with The Limeliters, an in-demand people music trio, and he had bought his land as an funding in 1962. Invoice Wheeler was scion of a Connecticut household whose fortune descended from his great-grandfather’s stitching machine invention. He got here west to attend the San Francisco Artwork Institute, moved to Sonoma County in 1963 and acquired 315 acres off Coleman Valley Street, excessive above Bodega Bay, in 1965. A yr later, he moved there along with his common-law spouse, Homosexual.
Neither man may have guessed that his land, or relatively the soon-to-be infamous commune on it, could be an element — alongside with the enlargement of Sonoma State School and a housing increase alongside the 101 hall — in reworking the politics and cultural sensibility of a rising county.
In 1960 the census counted 147,375 residents. By 1970 the depend was 204,000. In a rural and agricultural area dominated by ranchers and conservative Republicans, the rebel motion of people that had been going again to the land was sure to stir the pot.
The hippies had been about to reach.
Within the spring of 1966, Ramón Sender and his live-in associate Victoria, a schoolteacher, accepted Gottlieb’s invitation to spend spring break on his Sonoma County land. Sender and Gottlieb had met for the primary time a couple of months earlier, when Gottlieb was masking San Francisco’s Journeys Competition — co-produced by Sender, Complete Earth Catalog founder Stewart Model, neophyte impresario Invoice Graham and Merry Prankster Ken Kesey — for the San Francisco Chronicle.
“It was fabulously lovely,” Victoria remembers of Gottlieb’s property. “Within the early levels it was the Backyard of Eden. Ramón and I each had that imaginative and prescient. It was a launch from town.”
The primary day there, the couple loved their host’s hashish-laced cookies below blossoming apple bushes, and every subsequent day was lovelier than the final. On the finish of the week Sender determined to remain. Gottlieb, ill and taking a break from The Limeliters, returned to his household dwelling in El Cerrito, and would proceed commuting forwards and backwards for some months. Victoria resumed her instructing job; she joined Ramón on weekends till faculty let loose, after which she, too, moved north. Not lengthy after, she found some previous receipts in a closet within the ranchhouse and for the primary time discovered the official title of Gottlieb’s property: Morning Star.
A procession of associates adopted: experimental artists Ben and Rain Jacopetti of Berkeley’s Open Theatre, with their 8-year-old son, Hobart, artist and author Wilder Bentley, underground filmmaker Bruce Baillie, poet Pam Millward and finally, Gottlieb himself. Burned out from touring, he had determined to commit himself to his second instrument, the piano, hoping to turn out to be adequate to debut at Carnegie Corridor by his fiftieth birthday. Morning Star, a former rooster ranch, had two homes, however he selected to maneuver into the previous egg storage shed along with his Bosendorfer piano, a typewriter, a mattress and sleeping bag.
Joyful to have the others do no matter they wished, Gottlieb would observe for hours, then emerge to inform jokes and tales, expounding on his theories concerning the coming “snowball of cybernation” and the challenges dealing with “the primary wave of an ocean of technologically unemployables.” An ex-Communist with a Ph.D. in musicology from UC Berkeley, he got here to consider that non-public property was a sin. By precept and inclination, he was keen to open his land to all comers.
Ramón and Victoria lived awhile within the higher home, then constructed a platform on the japanese slope of the property to sleep below the celebrities. The Jacopettis settled right into a room off the kitchen within the decrease home. Rain did many of the cooking for the group; she and Ben had been followers of Subud, a religious observe that started in Indonesia within the Nineteen Twenties, and so they launched the others to macrobiotic cooking and the 10-day brown-rice weight loss plan.
This primary group at Morning Star shared comparable backgrounds and values. They had been artistic, they’d been raised in consolation, and whereas they’d cash, they wished to dwell merely. Morning Star’s orchards had been a cornucopia of scrumptious fruit; the septic system was satisfactory, the climate was elegant and that summer time, the dwelling was straightforward. Gottlieb and Sender bonded throughout that early LSD journey, and their friendship turned the glue that held Morning Star collectively because the commune grew. Their shared credo was Open Land: LATWIDNO: “Land Entry To Which Is Denied No One.”
Individuals labored when work was wanted, and marijuana and LSD mellowed out conflicts. Kids ran free; Bach and Mozart floated from the egg shed. Nudity was commonplace, and clothes took on new coloration and magnificence as garments had been mended, embroidered and refashioned.
Then Morning Star was found.
In 1967 the Diggers — a loosely knit group of artists and anarchists in Haight Ashbury who opened a free retailer and gave out free meals in San Francisco’s Panhandle neighborhood — arrived at Morning Star to select apples for his or her meals program. Quickly they requested to create a backyard.
“They introduced in leaf mulch and combined it with previous rooster shit. I’ve by no means seen something prefer it,” Victoria says. “You needed to leap again as a result of the greens grew so quick — they had been like outer area aliens. Even when 80 individuals had been dwelling there, we couldn’t eat all of them.” In San Francisco, Morning Star turned referred to as “The Digger Farm.”
“Early in 1967 that back-to-the-country factor turned a outstanding theme in hippie tradition,” mentioned Joel Selvin, writer of “The Summer season of Love” (1994), in a current interview. Selvin famous that quickly after the Human Be-In came about in Golden Gate Park in January of that yr, followers of the motion got here in droves to Haight Ashbury, “considering they’d found a panacea.”
“What had been manageable and a whole delight started to disintegrate,” Selvin continued. “It’s the mentality the utopian ideally suited attracts: as a substitute of accountable members you’re individuals wanting one thing without cost. Utopias are undermined by human nature.”
Within the Haight, the Diggers posted details about the commune, and a “Digger Free Bus” ran from their free retailer to Morning Star. Quickly a procession of hippies, flower youngsters, dropouts, outlaws, draft resisters, runaways, dilettantes and severe back-to-the-landers was making its approach north. Everybody was welcomed with no questions requested. There was no governing physique, no written guidelines. As soon as Sender needed to eject 4 troublemakers, and the choice tormented Gottlieb, who by no means willingly requested anybody to go away.
Time journal revealed a canopy story about Morning Star that yr, which led to extra development. The commune swelled to just about 150 residents. “Do your personal factor,” the hippie mantra, outlined habits, and Gottlieb’s conviction that nobody ought to be denied residency triggered issues. Most of the new arrivals had been younger individuals who’d by no means needed to take duty for themselves or their dwelling areas.
“We had been experimenting with the best way to come collectively and create an surroundings you wish to be in,” Rain displays. “The older individuals wished to be in a extra structured surroundings, centered on creativity and artwork. The brand new individuals had been centered on discovering out what life was about.” Her private breaking level got here after newcomers moved into her dwelling quarters whereas she was away visiting household in Idaho. Nobody advised them to not; that might have meant curbing freedom. Disenchanted, the Jacopettis quickly moved again to Berkeley, and later modified their names to Alexandra and Roland as a part of their Subud observe. (Right this moment Rain is a outstanding textile artist referred to as Alexandra Jacopetti Hart.)
Cindy Learn, a political activist and Digger, got here to Morning Star in 1967. Initially from Massachusetts, she had joined the peace motion, supported draft resisters and labored with the Pupil Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. After shifting to San Francisco, she and her roommates cooked cauldrons of soup each day of their house for the Diggers’ free meals program.
Learn was alongside for the journey the day after the Diggers “liberated” a load of lumber from San Francisco’s Goodman Lumberand drove it to Morning Star as a present. At supper she talked with Gottlieb and found a political kindred spirit. Upon return to town, she suffered a sexual assault. Her attacker was a “straight” — a mainstream acquaintance — and, afraid he would return to harm her however mistrustful of the police, she deserted the Haight for Morning Star.
In Rain Jacopetti’s absence, Learn quickly took cost of the kitchen. There was one communal meal a day when everybody would maintain arms and share a second of silence earlier than sitting right down to eat. She and a few helpers ready vats of brown rice, soup and contemporary vegetable salad with Gottlieb’s particular bitter cream dressing. She was high-quality with the work till one night when the diners decamped, leaving her with dozens of unwashed plates. This marked Learn’s breaking level, and he or she punctuated it by methodically smashing every dish into items and dumping them into the rubbish can.
Betty Friedan’s “The Female Mystique,” revealed in 1963, had urged ladies to create an id past marriage and youngsters — however that idea took years to embed itself within the counterculture. Hippies practiced their very own type of feminism, which Gretchen Lemke Santangelo describes in “Daughters of Aquarius: Girls of the Counterculture” (2009) as one “that affirmed … ‘pure’ or ‘important’ feminine traits” like nurturing, creating magnificence, and nest-building. Duties at Morning Star had been usually divided by gender: the boys constructed dwellings, did arduous bodily work and mentioned philosophy whereas the ladies, having fun with camaraderie, gardened, cooked and took care of the youngsters. All of them endured chilly, moist winters and intrusions from Graton Street. “Individuals would come by way of to gawk as a result of they had been or as a result of they hated us,” Learn says. “Some would spend an evening, then return to their day job. This one man planted a backyard like a mandala of lovely rising issues. He planted it, and went away.”
Morning Star could possibly be magical for its residents, however not essentially for its closest neighbor, Edward Hochuli. He was a retired Navy officer and assistant to Ambrose Nichols, the primary president of Sonoma State — and, Sonoma County historian Gaye LeBaron says, “definitely not of the social or mental mode to grasp or admire what Gottlieb was doing at Morning Star.”
Hochuli wrote to Sonoma County’s Board of Supervisors that he believed Morning Star offered a fireplace hazard. He complained concerning the stays of campfires that weren’t in compliance with the 15-foot clearance in Gottlieb’s hearth allow. The hearth inspectors identified that such issues occurred everywhere in the county, however hearth wasn’t Hochuli’s solely concern. He was incensed over nudity and specific sexual exercise inside view of his property line.
“Ed Hochuli was beside himself about Morning Star,” LeBaron remembers, “however I might have been involved if they’d been my neighbors. They had been peeing within the creek that ran by way of each properties and utilizing the outside for bogs. They scared individuals who couldn’t think about the place it was all going. It was not wholesome.”
Involved residents together with County Supervisor Robert Rath pressured the county to declare Morning Star an “organized camp,” which known as for strict rules. Gottlieb had a witty retort on the prepared (“Have you ever ever tried to prepare a bunch of hippies?”), however he cautioned his friends {that a} risk existed. Some paid consideration and set about clearing trash. Residents pitched in to treatment a septic area downside, which led to a hepatitis outbreak. Ultimately, Gottlieb acceded to the “organized camp” cost and had the communal bathhouse rebuilt to code, however a county well being inspector condemned the constructing.
Regardless of the following injunctions, arrests, fines and courtroom appearances Gottlieb was confronted with, sure judges and regulation enforcement officers had been sympathetic to the hippies and wished to work with them. A number of neighbors went to bat for Gottlieb as effectively in letters to The Press Democrat, and public opinion outdoors the county was extra constructive than adverse. Gottlieb was lively addressing civic teams, however there was an odd indifferent high quality to his efforts, and a few of his appearances had been pure showmanship. Gaye LeBaron was current when, carrying nothing however a loincloth and an anklet of bells, he addressed a bunch of junior faculty college students, mesmerizing them.
In September of 1967, Gottlieb was ordered to empty the commune. Invoice Wheeler, a frequent customer to Morning Star, provided to assist, and the next summer time some 50 Morning Star residents relocated to Wheeler Ranch. Wheeler’s property was huge and remoted, reachable by a deeply rutted highway that knocked out various vehicles. Partially due to the isolation, the residents developed a powerful sense of group. Many performed devices and sang, and the nights had been crammed with music.
Salli Rasberry (née Harrison),who lived in close by Freestone together with her associate, Robert Greenway, turned an everyday Sunday customer at Wheeler Ranch in its heyday, taking saunas, strolling the land, having fun with the corporate. When Invoice and Homosexual Wheeler’s daughter was born and named Raspberry Sunset Hummingbird, Salli determined to undertake the final title “Rasberry,” after the infant. “Invoice was sharing his giant inheritance with those who he didn’t even know,” says Rasberry. “He saved lots of people who didn’t have a house.” She additionally remembers that he was handsome and powerful, an alpha male with a contact of conceitedness. “He liked the women,” she says, “and so they liked him again.”
In the meantime, Gottlieb’s authorized battles continued. As a result of residents refused to go away, he was held in contempt of courtroom. With a view to keep away from extreme fines, he needed to place below citizen’s arrest all on his land who refused to go away, and he did so painfully. It was a dramatic second, however not at all remaining; many moved again, and new residents continued to maneuver in. By the summer time of 1968, the Morning Star inhabitants rebounded to 120, and Gottlieb paid dearly — slapped with fines that finally totaled practically $18,500.
In an effort to get out from below, Gottlieb provided to donate Morning Star to the county, and was refused. Then in Could 1969, in a transfer seen as a ploy by some and an ingenious technique by others, he went to the county clerk’s workplace and deeded his land to God. Public defender Rex Sater of Santa Rosa argued Gottlieb’s case earlier than Choose Kenneth Eymann, who dominated that God was not confirmed to be an individual, place or factor and subsequently couldn’t take possession. By 1971, bulldozers had been despatched in to stage practically each constructing on the ranch.
That very same destiny was nonetheless some two years away for Wheeler Ranch. Like Gottlieb, Invoice Wheeler had difficulties with a neighbor, James G. Kelly. The entry highway to the ranch ran by way of Kelly’s land, and the Kelly household tried to shut it off, as soon as padlocking the gate. Wheeler was an adroit negotiator, however he was sorely examined by Kelly — and by the FBI brokers, well being and constructing inspectors and sheriff’s deputies who started to point out up on the ranch in search of criminals, underage runaways, draft resisters, medication and well being and constructing violations. Members of the Hell’s Angels started to go to as effectively, in search of bother.
Ramón Sender believes that Wheeler’s commune, given time, may have grown right into a sustainable group. He borrows an idea put forth by Wired journal cofounder Kevin Kelly about organizations and why they work — that a mixture of 15 p.c construction and 85 p.c chaos is probably the most artistic. “Morning Star was 99 p.c chaos and 1 p.c construction; it by no means would have labored as a group,” says Sender. “Nevertheless, Wheeler’s ranch was progressively forming a bunch head. It was near an 85 to fifteen p.c combine when the county bulldozed it.”
At 6:30 within the morning on Could 18, 1973 — a morning when Invoice Wheeler himself occurred to be away — three bulldozers despatched by county officers roared onto his land. The 50some residents woke up by the ominous rumblings scrambled from their shelters and watched as the large machines — having gained entry by way of a specifically graded highway on James Kelly’s land — smashed and crunched Wheeler’s home and studio. The bulldozers turned subsequent to extra susceptible buildings: a treehouse constructed round an previous oak was damaged up, the tree destroyed within the course of. All through the day the machines shoved and scraped, however by day’s finish their work, for which Wheeler could be ordered to pay, was not but achieved.
When Wheeler arrived dwelling two days later, there was no dwelling to come back to. His friends, nonetheless in shock, had been dismantling their homes to avoid wasting them from the following wave, however the work proved tough by hand, and with Wheeler’s go-ahead they determined to clear by hearth. That night time they burned 50 properties in what felt like a sacred ritual, their final on the land, to avoid wasting bushes below which they’d sheltered. The subsequent day the bulldozers returned to complete the job.
“I don’t keep in mind many residents’ voices rising as much as say don’t bulldoze,” historian Gaye LeBaron says. “A few of us wished they wouldn’t, however we had been quiet about it as a result of we weren’t positive what was happening. It was a troubled time.”
“It’s laborious the place you draw the road between pretext and bonafide concern,” says Eric Koenigshofer, a former Sonoma County supervisor. “It’s like I say about nearly something I cope with politically and legally: It’s sophisticated, and errors had been made.”
After his commune was dismantled, Wheeler moved to Bolinas for a yr and a half. He returned north after a pal purchased out his adversary, James Kelly, and took up artwork as soon as once more, having fun with success as a panorama painter. Lately he teaches drawing as soon as per week in Occidental and lives on his land. Wheeler has been ill and was not interviewed for this text. He has been quoted as saying he’s blocked out a variety of what got here down within the Nineteen Seventies. Fortuitously for posterity, it’s on the document in Sender’s e book “Residence Free Residence,” an oral historical past of the communes that weaves collectively many voices from the time.
Lou Gottlieb returned to the reconstituted Limeliters in 1972. Over the last years of his life he moved again to Morning Star, the place associates constructed him a shed to sleep in and play his piano. He spent most days at his pal Steve Fowler’s dwelling in Sebastopol engaged on his laptop; there was no electrical energy on his personal land.
“Lots of people got here and sat at Lou’s ft,” Fowler remembers fondly. “He was all the time on 24/7.” Gottlieb by no means made a Carnegie Corridor debut. He died at Palm Drive Hospital in Sebastopol in July 1996. His heirs, together with a son born at Morning Star to his thenpartner, Rena Blumberg, have but to decide about the way forward for the land.
Traditionally, Sonoma has had quite a few utopian communities, beginning within the nineteenth century. “As soon as, somebody requested me in a category why I assumed there have been so many,” LeBaron mentioned not too long ago. “I instructed that it was type of a sheltering place; the hills and valleys make you suppose you’re protected. The person mentioned, ‘No, it’s as a result of Sonoma County is a Mom County — for those who have a look at a map it’s formed like a uterus.’ I don’t purchase it, however I keep in mind it.”
This yr, the hippie period is being celebrated throughout the nation with displays and packages — not as a result of it was sensational, although it was, and never as a result of it was unprecedented, although it was. It’s being celebrated due to the profound adjustments the counterculture made in America in the best way we see ourselves, the environment and the world of prospects.
There are nonetheless communes within the county, however they hold a low profile. Sonoma is a distinct place right this moment; it’s traded the “Redwood Empire” moniker for “Wine Nation,” and there are even stricter environmental rules. The Board of Supervisors has been dominated by liberals for years, and registered Democrats far outnumber Republicans. And it will take weeks to hit all of the yoga studios, natural groceries, vegetarian cafes and outlets promoting tie-dye shirts, Buddhist books and crystals.
Author and actor Peter Coyote, who was a member of the Diggers, places it this manner: “Anybody who is consuming natural meals, being handled by acupuncture, homeopathy, or naturopathy; anybody who’s in a ladies’s motion, environmental motion, or training an alternate faith to Judeo-Christian beliefs, owes some respect to the counterculture who retrieved all these disciplines and thought from the nice collective warehouse of human historical past and the nice underground.”
Wheeler’s and Morning Star could have misplaced the battle, however there’s proof that culturally a minimum of, the hippies gained the warfare.
The Dynamic Duo
Lou Gottlieb (at proper) (b. 1923), a celebrated bassist and singer with people music trio The Limeliters, bought 31 acres in west county as an funding in 1962. By 1966 he had a brand new id because the laidback landlord of the Morning Star commune. Recalled by associates as a mix of thinker and entertainer, sybarite and monk, Gottlieb’s soul was music, however preserving a spot of refuge for all comers turned his trigger célèbre.
The authorized troubles Gottlieb encountered because of Morning Star’s quite a few well being and constructing violations in the end led to fines totaling practically $18,500.
When an effort to donate the property to Sonoma County was refused, Gottlieb tried to deed it to God — a formidable however unsuccessful transfer that also serves as a mock courtroom case for regulation college students across the nation.
Gottlieb spent the final years of his life again at Morning Star; he died in Sebastopol in 1996.
Invoice Wheeler (b. 1941) got here west to attend the San Francisco Artwork Institute and moved to Sonoma County in 1963, shopping for 315 acres off Coleman Valley Street, excessive above Bodega Bay, in 1965. When his pal Lou Gottlieb’s authorized troubles got here to a head, Wheeler provided Morning Star’s displaced residents a house at Wheeler Ranch — starting a journey that might take him worlds away from his well-heeled, buttoned-up Connecticut roots. An artist and free spirit, self-reliant and introspective, over the following few years Wheeler misplaced his inherited fortune however discovered a spot in historical past.
THE PROPERTIES
Though Lou Gottlieb initially bought Morning Star Ranch, a former rooster farm, as an funding, his open-land credo quickly made it dwelling to a procession of hippies, flower youngsters, draft resisters, runaways, and severe back-to-the-landers. Following a 1967 Time journal cowl story concerning the commune, its inhabitants swelled to just about 150 — and its neighbors and county officers grew involved about perceived hearth and well being hazards and illicit actions on the property.
After years of authorized wrangling that culminated in Gottlieb’s failed try to deed the property to God, the county despatched in bulldozers to tear down its buildings in 1971. Right this moment the land remains to be owned by Gottlieb’s heirs.
Excessive above Bodega Bay off Coleman Valley Street, Wheeler Ranch was initially dwelling to Invoice Wheeler and his common-law spouse, Homosexual, earlier than its second incarnation as a commune following the displacement of the hippies
dwelling at Gottlieb’s Morning Star Ranch. Partially due to the property’s isolation, its residents developed a powerful sense of group.
Ultimately focused by FBI brokers, well being and constructing inspectors and sheriff’s deputies, Wheeler’s met the identical destiny as Morning Star, with bulldozers arriving in Could 1973. The night time earlier than the ultimate levelling of its stuctures, Wheeler Ranch residents burned some 50 properties themselves, in what felt to many like their final sacred ritual on the land.