"The Ultimate Hippie Fantasy"

A pot-friendly, clothing optional treehouse village at the end of the road on Kaua‘i's North Shore.

Taylor Camp started in 1969 as a group of hippies and surfers who built an off-the-grid treehouse community on pristine oceanfront land owned by Howard Taylor (brother of actress Elizabeth). At its peak, the utopian village had a self-governing population of 120, many of whom had fled the madness of Vietnam and political unrest on the continental U.S. and believed they could create a paradise based on alternative human and ecological ideals. Taylor Camp ended in flames in 1977 when residents were evicted by local authorities.

 

 

Thirteen Berkeley students – free speech refugees from campus riots, Vietnam War protests and police brutality – fled to Kauai in 1969. Before long, they were arrested for vagrancy and sentenced to 90 days of hard labor. In a crumbling jail lacking security, staff and budget, county officials panicked, realizing they were now saddled with the expense of feeding, clothing and guarding this motley crew.

Howard Taylor, a libertarian property owner on the island, read about these young people in the local paper and asked the judge to release them to his custody. The judge agreed, and Howard invited the group to camp on the vacant beachfront land he owned across the bay from his private home. He then left the campers to themselves, without any rules or directions.

Within a year, the area became known as Taylor Camp, attracting surfers, hippies, locals, and veterans from the war that was still raging in Vietnam. Built on one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, Taylor Camp was an accidental intentional community: a village that welcomed all races, religions, nationalities and genders.

 

The Kauai that the campers experienced was an anomaly: a brief period of low population and natural abundance as the plantation economy wound down, but before the current real estate bonanza and the financial, ecological and cultural assault of mass tourism.

Eight years later, after condemning Howard's property to make way for a state park, government officials torched Taylor Camp’s tree houses, leaving only ashes and memories of what many describe today as “the best days of our lives.”

 

Through a lucky twist of fate, a young photographer named John Wehrheim had met Howard Taylor's family through his girlfriend and followed the evolution of Taylor Camp from its inception. After traveling through Asia and documenting refugee communities in the Himalayas, he returned to Kauai and saw Taylor Camp with an anthropological lens that motivated him to document its residents and environment extensively. Those photographs are now the most comprehensive record of Taylor Camp's short-lived utopian existence.

 

 

Thirty years later, Wehrheim tracked down former Taylor Camp residents as well as the neighbors and government officials who finally got rid of them for his documentary film, "Taylor Camp." Through those interviews, we begin to understand the significance of Taylor Camp’s existence: one of the most extraordinary and symbolic examples of the worldwide 1960s youth culture. 

John Wehrheim’s photos were later curated into the hardcover photography book, "Taylor Camp"” (Serindia Press, 2009). They have appeared in dozens of publications around the world, including Der Spiegel, FORBES Czech, Honolulu Magazine, Hana Hou Magazine, Huffington Post, London Daily Mail, Slate, Buzz Feed, Trip, SF Gate, Honolulu Civil Beat, and The Surfer’s Journal. The book was followed by the documentary film, “The Edge of Paradise” (2018), which was named by MidWeek Magazine columnist Bob Jones the best Hawai‘i film of 2019.

For anyone who wants to understand the Taylor Camp story, this is the place to start.

 

Get the Book           

Watch the Documentary