Morning Star and Wheeler's Open Land Communes: A Brief Run-Through of Their Histories

by Ramïn Sender Barayïn (Editor), Laurel Bay Alicia (Other), French Sally (Other)

Overview

A brief descrption of Morning Star and Wheeler Ranches in Sonoma County, California during the late sixties-early seventies, including the two Wheeler Ranch manifestos.

During the late sixties-early seventies, two open-door communal ranches opened their gates in Sonoma County, California. Nothing quite like them had ever existed before, and people came from all over the country to live there. Together, they allowed city folks and others to rediscover and practice a tribal, neo-primitive way of life that consumed less energy and offered more freedom than our regulated, consumption-oriented Great Society could give. Many of these settlers formed small families that migrated north to the 'Kingdom of New Albion, ' as we call the rural areas of Mendocino, Humboldt and other counties, where land was cheap and they could continue thieir new-found lifestyle unmolested.

At our two ranches, we experienced a magical eight years until Sonoma County authorities discovered that they could use the health and buildings codes punitively to bulldoze the houses, expel the inhabitants, and close them both down. Although Lou Gottlieb's Morning Star and Bill Wheeler's Sheep Ridge/Ahimsa differed in many respects, they both celebrated the freedom of each individual to 'do their thing, ' as long as no harm came to anyone or to the land. People who arrived, allergic to everything they had experienced, discovered the healing aspects of living on the earth with no concrete foundation under them, of building a home-made simple structure, and the pride that came from 'owning' their habitation, even if only a hut with a canvas roof.

But the change was too sudden for many neighbors, who feared that drug-crazed hippies would lead their children astray. In the case of each ranch, one politically powerful neighbor acted as the catalyst, and saw to it that the district attorney acted on their complaints. By 1973, it was all over, and the fines levied and legal fees for the defense ocquired ran into many thousands of dollars. Sonoma County's fees no dount were even greater for the abortive raids and harassments, many of which were found illegal and thrown out of court.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781882260249
Publisher:	Calm Unity Press
Publication date:	10/11/2016
Edition description:	A Brief Description of Morning Star and Wheeler Ranches in Sonoma County, California During the Late ed.
Pages:	78
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.16(d)

About the Author

Ramón Sender Barayón is a central figure in the history of the greater Bay Area counterculture: electronic music pioneer, co-producer of the Trips Festival in San Francisco, consigliere and chief remembrancer of Morning Star and Wheeler Ranch communes. Born in Spain in 1934, an undocumented refugee until age 12, he is a living link between the radical communal traditions of the Old and the New World through his father, the Spanish Republican novelist Ramón J. Sender, and his first wife's great grandfather, John Humphrey Noyes, founder of the nineteenth century religious utopian Oneida Community, by way of the authoritarian communism of the Bruderhof. In exile from fascist Spain with his father and sister-as citizens of the planet, without attachments... radical cosmopoli-tans, Ramón fetched up in New York City where he began his music studies before continuing at the San Francisco Conservatory and Mills College -- from Iain Boal's introduction in West of Eden: Communes and Utopia in Northern California (PM Press, 2011)

Table of Contents

A Fast Run Through Timeline
Manifesto I from Wheeler Ranch 1969
Manifesto II from Wheeler Ranch 1971