Guest Column: Community Meetings: The Hippies Get Organized

The following column is a personal reflection on Whale Gulch, community meetings, and the back-to-the-land history of Southern Humboldt and northern Mendocino by Paul Modic.

For thirty or forty years, community meetings were part of life in the hills—held up various dirt roads throughout Southern Humboldt and just over the county line in Whale Gulch (in some areas they are still held). This reflection looks back at those gatherings, the unofficial consensus process that shaped them, and the people and places that helped define a particular era of back-to-the-land life.

“Sandy is holding the baby, and Jim Lynn, Doug Green, and others are present.” [Image provided by Paul Modic for an earlier column]

Remember all those community meetings we used to have in the hills for thirty or forty years up various dirt roads throughout Southern Humboldt? At the ones we had in Whale Gulch, just over the county line in Mendocino in the Thompson Creek Meadow, I was shy and rarely said anything though I never missed one. When “New West,” (later called “California” magazine), sent a journalist out to do a story about the Gulch in 1979, he sat in on one of those meetings.(I heard that Sandy invited him and the article was called “The Last Hippies Hang Out.” I can see the back of myself sitting in the circle in the accompanying photo and still have that issue of the magazine.)

We practiced an unofficial and odd process of consensus during those meetings. Many times it seemed like the first person who suggested some course of action on the topic at hand had their opinion adopted. No one disagreed, there was no further discussion or debate and it was on to the next item. The back and forth about what to call our nonprofit was a longer discussion and we finally came up with Coastal Headwaters Association of Old Smokers or CHAOS, though when the official papers filed with the state the “Old Smokers” part was left out. (Everyone was stoned except Ray Raphael, the original Gulcher, author and junior high teacher who kept the meetings somewhat focused, at least when the school was on the agenda.)

Why did I say nothing then and why would I probably chime in more now? Probably fear of saying something stupid or just general fear of public speaking? Many years later in these modern times, people have been trained by the internet to spout off their opinions relentlessly and those meetings may be different now, out there in the middle of The Meadow.

When Bob McKee bought the whole area, about 600 acres for $50,000, in the late sixties, he sliced up Whale Gulch into interesting sizes from half an acre to forty, depending upon where the water was. (He also subdivided ranches throughout Southern Humboldt and is known as the guy who jumpstarted the back-to-the-land movement in Humboldt County, selling inexpensive logged-over land with easy terms to the new settlers.)

After he sold a lot of those three, seven, and eleven acre parcels, he gave the community The Meadow, where the annual May Day and Halloween Trade Fairs take place. The land was deeded to six longtime residents and that worked out until most of them moved away. Some of the movers and shakers cleaned up the deed and the beautiful and nearly flat land, surrounded by the classic steep Gulch, was put under the Coastal Headwaters nonprofit umbrella.

(An autobiography called I Like It Here: Life stories of Humboldt’s Bob McKee was published in 2022. It was compiled and edited by Ray Raphael who recorded 50 hours of tape in collaboration with Bob. Ray is the author of 20 books, several utilizing oral histories. His 1974 breakthrough publication was An Everyday History of Somewhere, about the last of the old-timers and arrival of the hippie invasion to Southern Humboldt and Northern Mendocino.)

Submitted as a personal column reflecting on local history and community life in Whale Gulch.