Morningstar Commune

'''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.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/sonoma-west-times-and-news/137989491/ |title=A visit to the new 'hippy' farm |newspaper=Sonoma West Times and News |date=May 25, 1967 |page=2}}</ref>

==History== In 1966, Lou Gottlieb, a member of the folk group The Limeliters, purchased 31 acres of land in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco. That same year, composer Ramon Sender and several artists associated with the San Francisco counterculture moved onto the property, initially using it as a rural retreat.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Potocki |first=P. Joseph |date=30 April 2008 |title=God's Commune |url=https://bohemian.com/gods-commune-1/ |magazine=North Bay Bohemian |location= |publisher= |access-date=11 January 2026}}</ref>

In 1967, Gottlieb opened the land to all comers under the principle “Land Access To Which Is Denied No One” (LATWIDNO), a term he coined to describe the ranch and similar communal experiments.<ref name="MIJ March 2017">{{cite news |last=Liberatore |first=Paul |date=10 March 2017 |title=‘The Hippies’ celebrates the brief but revolutionary history of the North Bay’s communes |url=https://www.marinij.com/2017/03/10/the-hippies-celebrates-the-brief-but-revolutionary-history-of-the-north-bays-communes/ |work=Marin Independent Journal |location= |publisher= |access-date=}}</ref><ref name="Sonoma Feb 2024">{{cite magazine |last=Wasserman |first=Abby |date=February 2024 |title=The Psychedelic Rise and Fall of Two Sonoma Communes |url=https://www.sonomamag.com/sonoma-county-communes/ |magazine=Sonoma |location= |publisher= |access-date=11 January 2026}}</ref> The property became known as Morning Star. It attracted members of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury Diggers and became part of the circuit of young people travelling between San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district and Sebastopol, California.<ref name="MIJ March 2017"/><ref name="Lewison"/><ref name="Boal Stone Watts Winslow 2012 p. 9">{{cite book |last1=Boal |first1=Iain | last2=Stone | first2=Janferie | last3=Watts | first3=Michael | last4=Winslow | first4=Calvin|title=West of Eden : communes and utopia in northern California |publisher=PM Press |publication-place=Oakland, CA, US |year=2012 |isbn=9781604864274 |id={{OCLC|726821221|785217571|974339435}} |page=9 |oclc=785217571 }}</ref> According to later accounts, the commune preached that “if you told no one to leave, the land (the vibes) selected the people who lived on it.”<ref name="Barayón 2016">{{cite book |last=Barayón |first=Ramón Sender |title=Morning Star and Wheeler's open land communes : a brief run-through of their histories : and Manifesto I and Manifesto II |publisher=Calm Unity Press |publication-place=San Francisco, CA, US |year=2016 |isbn=9781882260249 |oclc=994457252}}</ref>

By mid to late 1967, Morning Star functioned as an open, anarchic commune with no formal membership, rules, or limits on residency. Hundreds of people visited on weekends, with a smaller group living full-time in makeshift shelters. The site lacked formal sanitation systems, electricity, and building permits. Neighbours complained about noise, nudity, waste disposal, and public health conditions.<ref name="Sonoma Feb 2024"/>

In 1968, Sonoma County authorities issued injunctions against habitation on the land, citing zoning, sanitation, and “organised camp” violations. Residents were repeatedly arrested for sleeping on the property, and county crews bulldozed shelters.<ref name="Sonoma Feb 2024"/>

In October 1968, Gottlieb appeared before the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors and offered the land to the county as “an experiment in living”.<ref name="Lewison">{{cite web |last=Lewison |first=Sarah A. |date= |title=time in de-tension: Some Northern California Experiments in Open Land |url=https://www.academia.edu/1419345/Time_in_De_tension_some_Northern_California_experiments_in_open_land |website= |location= |publisher= |access-date=11 January 2026}}</ref> The proposal was rejected. In 1969, he transferred ownership of the property to “God” through a recorded deed, arguing in court that the land should exist outside economic ownership. Courts rejected the deed, upheld county enforcement actions, and legal disputes continued through 1969 and 1970. Gottlieb accumulated fines and was jailed for one week on contempt charges. His fines ultimately exceeded $14,000. County authorities bulldozed structures on the property on three occasions, at Gottlieb’s expense.<ref name="Sonoma Feb 2024"/>

As enforcement intensified from 1969 onward, many residents, including families and women, relocated to a nearby property established by Bill Wheeler, commonly known as Wheeler’s Ranch.<ref name="Sonoma Feb 2024"/> It operated on similar open-access principles but with somewhat greater structure. Both Morning Star and Wheeler’s Ranch were subject to inspections and enforcement by county health officials and sheriff’s departments. The ranch existed in its open-access form from 1967 to the early 1970s and remained a regular gathering place for travellers from the Haight. Sonoma County eventually imposed a permanent injunction forbidding anyone except Gottlieb’s family from living on the property. Sustained legal action and repeated clearances effectively ended habitation at both Morning Star and Wheeler’s Ranch by the early 1970s.<ref name="Sonoma Feb 2024"/> Morning Star had ceased to exist as a functioning commune by 1973.<ref name="Barayón 2017 p. ">{{cite book |last=Barayón |first=Ramón Sender |title=Home free home : a history of two open-door California communes, Morning Star Ranch and Wheeler's Ahimsa Ranch |publisher=Calm Unity Press |publication-place=San Francisco, CA, US |year=2017 |isbn=9781882260256 |oclc=1008767632}}</ref>

Morning Star and Wheeler’s Ranch formed part of a wider North Bay network of communes, which included Olompali in Marin County, where members of the Grateful Dead lived communally in 1966, and the short-lived Chosen Family commune that followed there. By the mid-1970s, county-level crackdowns in Sonoma and Marin, using zoning, health, and building regulations, had dismantled most open-access communes in the region.<ref name="Sonoma Feb 2024"/>

In 1969, some former commune members moved to Taos County, New Mexico, where the settlement was later turned into a farm.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Lerner |first=David |title=¿Paradise found? |url=https://www.taosnews.com/magazines/raices-tradiciones/paradise-found/article_b63f27de-4931-5ae3-9168-6ef428092c31.html |access-date=2023-04-26 |website=The Taos News |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Brown |first=Cindy |date=June 2, 2021 |title=Honoring the earth to create healthy soil and healthy food |work=Taos News |url=https://www.taosnews.com/la-vida/home-and-garden/honoring-the-earth-to-create-healthy-soil-and-healthy-food/article_4256f38e-56e7-58f1-9ec9-472486290916.html}}</ref> This site became informally known as Morning Star East.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Miller |first=Timothy |date=October 1, 2012 |title=New Mexico's New Communal Settlers |url=https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1168&context=nmhr |journal=New Mexico Historical Review |volume=87 |issue=1 |pages=69–74}}</ref>

During the 1970s, when The Limeliters reunited, their autobiographical song “Acres of Limeliters” referred to Gottlieb’s activities during the hiatus, including the lyric: “. . .while Lou played Executive Hippie at his Morningstar groupie rest home!”

In later decades, “Morningstar” became the name of one of the residences at Twin Oaks Community in Virginia, where buildings are named after defunct communes. Ramon Sender continued to document the history of the Free Land movement and Morning Star by compiling oral history interviews, later published as “Home Free Home”.<ref name="Barayon">{{cite web |last=Barayon |first=Ramon Sender |display-authors=etal |title=Home Free Home |website=The Digger Archives Home Page |url=http://www.diggers.org/home_free.htm |access-date=2018-05-09}}</ref>

==In media== T. C. Boyle's 2003 novel ''Drop City'' tells the fictional account of a commune with many qualities in common with Morningstar.<ref name="Matthews 2010">{{cite book |last=Matthews |first=Mark |title=Droppers : America's first hippie commune, Drop City |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press |publication-place=Norman, OK, US |year=2010 |isbn=9780806183084 |oclc=819379606 |pages=9–10, 185, 190–191 }}</ref>

In 2008, a play written about the Morningstar Commune premiered in California.<ref name="MorningStar Play 2013">{{cite web |title=MorningStar Play |website=morningstarplay.com |date=2013-05-29 |url=http://www.morningstarplay.com/ |access-date=2018-05-09}}</ref>

== References == {{reflist}}

==External links== *{{cite web |last1=Barayón |first1=Ramon Sender |last2=and all |title=Morningstar The Flower Children of the Sixties, hippies, morningstar ranch, flower children |website=Morningstar, Wheelers, Hippie Museum, Diggers |date=2010-04-13 |url=http://laurelrose.com/FLOWERCHILDREN.HTM }} Links to ''Morningstar Newsletter'', ''Scrapbook of Morningstar Photos'', and other material. *{{cite web |title=Louis Gottlieb interviewed by James Walls :: Gaye LeBaron Digital Collection |website=North Bay Digital Collections |date=1970-05-21 |url=http://northbaydigital.sonoma.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/Lebaron/id/3279/rec/3 |ref={{sfnref |North Bay Digital Collections |1970}}}} *{{cite web |title=Morningstar |website=The Digger Archives Home Page |url=http://www.diggers.org/most/morningstar.htm |ref={{sfnref |The Digger Archives Home Page}} |access-date=2018-05-10}} Has an ''Index of Materials''. *{{cite web |title=Morningstar Scrapbook.html |website=badabamama.com |url=http://badabamama.com/morningstar-scrapbook.html |ref={{sfnref |morningstar-scrapbook}} |access-date=2018-05-10}}

Category:Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area Category:Hippie movement Category:Counterculture of the 1960s Category:History of Sonoma County, California Category:Intentional communities in California Category:Communes