Honors Theses (History)

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Searching for paradise in the rain : Oregon's communes and intentional communities of the 1960s and 1970s
(University Of Oregon, 1997-08) Vanneman, Brian Robert
In the late 1960s, the United States' expanding counterculture gave rise to thousands of communes, or intentional communities, which sprouted up across the nation. Many of these communities chose Oregon to be their new home because of the state's progressive politics and social climate, fertile farmland, and proximity to California, at the time a hotbed of political activism. Magic Farm and Alpha Farm, two Oregon communities described in detail in the thesis, exemplify some of the many approaches to the institutional, economic, and social challenges posed by communal living. Ultimately, the tale of these two settlements explains in part the reasons that some intentional communities continue to prosper even today, while others collapsed in the middle 1970s. Regardless of their final fate, Magic Farm and Alpha Farm, as well as their many companion communities, are part of Oregon's very rich recent history filled with those who have searched for paradise in the rain.