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Morningstar Commune (also known as Morning Star Ranch and The Digger Farm) was an active open land counterculture commune in rural Sonoma County, California, located at 12542 Graton Road near Occidental. [1]
Morningstar was part of the changing society of young adults in the 1960s that traveled back and forth between San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district and Sebastopol. [2] Co-founder Louis Gottlieb coined the acronym LATWIDNO (Land Access To Which Is Denied No One) to refer to the ranch and other similar communal-living experiments. They preached that "if you told no one to leave, the land (the vibes) selected the people who lived on it." [3] The ranch existed in this form for a short time (1967-1972) but was a regular gathering-place for many of those traveling through the Haight. Sonoma County finally placed a permanent injunction forbidding anyone but Gottlieb's family from living there, and proceeded to bulldoze structures three times (at Gottlieb's expense). Gottlieb's fines for 'contempt of court' for not ordering people off the land finally totaled over $14,000. He also was jailed for a week on contempt charges. After all the turmoil, Morningstar ceased to exist by 1973. [4]
Commune members moved to Taos County, New Mexico, in 1969 where it was later turned into a farm. [5] [6] The New Mexico location was sometimes referred to as Morning Star East. [7]
"Morningstar" lives on as the name of one of the residences at Twin Oaks Community, a contemporary commune of 100 members in Virginia. All buildings at Twin Oaks are named after communities that no longer exist. Ramon Sender has written about Morningstar as part of his effort to document the history of the Free Land movement by compiling oral history interviews. See "Home Free Home". [8]
When the Limeliters folk trio (of which Gottlieb was a founding member) reunited in the 1970s, their autobiographical song "Acres of Limeliters" noted the activities of the members while they had been apart, including the line ". . .while Lou played Executive Hippie at his Morningstar groupie rest home!"
T.C. Boyle's 2003 novel Drop City tells the fictional account of a commune with many qualities in common with Morningstar. [9]
In 2008, a play written about the Morningstar Commune premiered in California. [10]
A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during or around 1964 and spread to different countries around the world. The word hippie came from hipster and was used to describe beatniks who moved into New York City's Greenwich Village, San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, and Chicago's Old Town community. The term hippie was used in print by San Francisco writer Michael Fallon, helping popularize use of the term in the media, although the tag was seen elsewhere earlier.
Morning Star, morning star, or Morningstar may refer to:
The Diggers were a radical community-action group of activists and street theatre actors operating from 1966 to 1968, based in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. Their politics have been categorized as "left-wing." More accurately, they were "community anarchists" who blended a desire for freedom with a consciousness of the community in which they lived. The Diggers' central tenet was to be "authentic," seeking to create a society free from the dictates of money and capitalism.
The California Republic, or Bear Flag Republic, was an unrecognized breakaway state from Mexico, that for 25 days in 1846 militarily controlled an area north of San Francisco, in and around what is now Sonoma County in California.
Haight-Ashbury is a district of San Francisco, California, named for the intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets. It is also called The Haight and The Upper Haight. The neighborhood is known as one of the main centers of the counterculture of the 1960s.
Sonoma Valley is a valley located in southeastern Sonoma County, California, in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. Known as the birthplace of the California wine industry, the valley is home to some of the earliest vineyards and wineries in the state, some of which survived the phylloxera epidemic of the 1870s and the impact of prohibition in the early 20th century. Today, the valley's wines are promoted by the U.S. federal government's Sonoma Valley and Carneros AVAs.
The Hog Farm is an organization considered America's longest running hippie commune. Beginning as a collective in North Hollywood, California, during the 1960s, a later move to an actual hog farm in Tujunga, California gave the group its name. Founded by peace activist Hugh Romney and his actress wife Jahanara Romney, the Hog Farm evolved into a "mobile, hallucination-extended family", active internationally in both music and politics. A documentary short The Hog Farm Movie, filmed in 1967/68, was digitally restored in July 2019.
Stephen Gaskin was an American counterculture Hippie icon best known for his presence in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco in the 1960s and for co-founding "The Farm", a spiritual commune in 1970. He was a Green Party presidential primary candidate in 2000 on a platform which included campaign finance reform, universal health care, and decriminalization of marijuana. He was the author of over a dozen books, political activist, a philanthropic organizer and a self-proclaimed professional Hippie.
The Limeliters are an American folk music group, formed in July 1959 by Lou Gottlieb, Alex Hassilev (banjo/baritone), and Glenn Yarbrough (guitar/tenor). The group was active from 1959 until 1965, and then after a hiatus of sixteen years, Yarbrough, Hassilev, and Gottlieb reunited and began performing again as The Limeliters in reunion tours. On a regular basis a continuation of The Limeliters group is still active and performing. Gottlieb died in 1996, Yarbrough died in 2016, and Hassilev, the last founding member, who had remained active in the group, retired in 2006, leaving the group to carry on without any of the original members.
Ramón Sender Barayón is a composer, visual artist and writer. He was the co-founder with Morton Subotnick of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in 1962. He is the son of Spanish writer Ramón J. Sender.
Drop City was a counterculture artists' community that formed near the town of Trinidad in southern Colorado in 1960. Abandoned by 1979, Drop City became known as the first rural "hippie commune".
Louis Gottlieb credited as Lou Gottlieb, was an American bassist and comic spokesman for music trio The Limeliters. He held a PhD in musicology and was considered one of the so-called "new comedy" performers, a new generation of unabashed intellectuals that also included Mort Sahl, Nichols and May, and Lenny Bruce. In 1966 he established the Morningstar Ranch, a community that he declared open to all people and which later became central to a legal dispute related to the ethics of ownership of land.
The hippie subculture began its development as a youth movement in the United States during the early 1960s and then developed around the world.
Rancho Petaluma was a 66,622-acre (269.61 km2) Mexican land grant in present-day Sonoma County, California given in 1834 by Governor José Figueroa to Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. Rancho Petaluma stretched from Petaluma River on the west over the hills and down to Sonoma Creek on the east, including all land that lay between these two waterways from the edge of San Francisco Bay to approximately the present site of Glen Ellen. The rancho included present-day Petaluma and Lakeville.
Rancho Sotoyome was a 48,837-acre (197.64 km2) Mexican land grant given to Henry D. Fitch. Sotoyome or "Satiyomes" was the name of a Wappo tribe. The grant, in present-day Sonoma County, California, extended along the Russian River encompassing the Alexander Valley and present-day Healdsburg.
Rancho Cabeza de Santa Rosa was an 8,885-acre (35.96 km2) Mexican land grant in present-day Sonoma County, California given in 1841 by Governor pro tem Manuel Jimeno to María Ygnacia López. The grant was along Santa Rosa Creek, and encompassed present-day Santa Rosa, California.
Rancho Bolsa de Tomales was a Mexican land grant in present day Marin County and Sonoma County, California given in 1846 by Governor Pío Pico to Juan Nepomuceno Padilla. The name means "the Pool of the Tomales Indians," which referred to Burbank’s Lake. The grant extended along the Pacific coast from Estero de San Antonio south to Walker Creek, and encompassed present day Tomales. Stemple Creek transversed the property. The land claim was rejected as fraudulent by the US Supreme Court.
Lisa Law is an American photographer and filmmaker of 1960s counterculture best known, with Peter Whiterabbit, for photographing the 1969 Woodstock festival, where she also organised food. She was also involved in the organisation of the Woodstock '99 festival.
New Buffalo was a hippie commune in Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico. It was co-founded by poets Max Finstein and Rick Klein in 1968 and was in operation for numerous years. It served as Dennis Hopper's inspiration for the hippie commune depicted in the movie Easy Rider.