Morningstar Ranch and Wheeler Ranch: Two Online Scrapbooks

Flipping through the pages of The Last Whole Earth Catalog, I came across a photo of naked people lounging around in a disheveled yert with chickens. From the caption, I learned it was an open door Sonoma County commune from the late 60s, Morningstar Ranch.

Riddled by legal battles with hostile neighbors, the commune's landlord and leader, Lou Gottlieb, hoped to save his colony by deeding the property to God. This scrapbook documents the life and death of Morningside Ranch, who are said to have been diggers, and I think Peter Cayote lived there.

After being driven from their land, some of Morningstar's refugees wound up at the nearby, equally doomed, Wheeler Ranch:






Also. The Security Photos series is worth reading about and looking at.

The Last Whole Earth Catalog, 1971

There's no one I'd rather spend the day with than The Last Whole Earth Catalog (1971). But inspired by it as I am, I'm too lazy to go out and hunt and forage for my own meal, so I've decided to instead, harness my energies by time traveling back to 1971, where I'll freely be able to order some of the catalog's intriguing books:

1. The Wilderness Cabin (Log construction, site selection, use of heavy timber tools)
2. The Dome Cookbook
3. Goat Husbandry
4. American Indian Medicine
5. How To Make Booze
6. The Israel Army Physical Fitness Handbook
7. Open Land: A Manifesto
8. The Human Use Of Human Beings
9. The Amateur Archaeologist's Handbook
10. Wood Heat Quarterly

Steve Jobs sees the Whole Earth Catalog as having been the precursor to the internet. Flipping through it, I can see why. Its oversized pages are a dense jumble of how-to diagrams, hippie manifestos, and homespun visions of self reliance that have me fantasizing about building a bark teepee in the woods.




Browse entire editions online, or, buy used copies of The Last Whole Earth Catalog Access to Tools at Amazon.