“Housing, to be sure, was inadequate: food monotonous, and work extremely hard. “All of them bore witness to the happiness of those first few months at Llano,” he wrote. Some colonists followed Harriman to New Llano in Louisiana, while others stayed in the Antelope Valley.ĭecades later, writer Aldous Huxley interviewed some of the Llano colonists. In 1918, Llano Del Rio was abandoned, the victim of in-fighting, financial woes and that old California problem- lack of water. By 1917, the commune boasted its own hotel, Montessori school, art studio, hatchery, library, dairy, barbershop, machine shop and a printing press which cranked out Harriman’s numerous socialist tracts.īut the colonies glory day’s proved to be short-lived. Founded by famed socialist Job Harriman, Llano Del Rio had at its peak some 1,500 residents attempting a communal, co-equal way of life in the harsh, deserted desert. Perhaps California’s most famous Utopian experiment, this socialist colony deep in the Antelope Valley was incorporated in 1913. Many of their Beachwood Canyon buildings, including the iconic Krotona Inn, are now sought after apartments and luxury estates.

Annoyed by increasingly cosmopolitan Hollywood, the Theosophist’s decamped for Ojai in 1924, where they remain to this day.

you won't see nor hear any movement … except the birds in the trees, the humming insects in the lazy sunshine, and the daring goldfish in the splashy fountains, while the roses nod to you, and the little Moorish summer houses with their enveloping vines will make you sure you've discovered a bit of dreamland.īut this utopian dreamland was not to last.

A reporter visiting Krotona described an idyllic scene:

Blavatsky, founder of the theosophy movement, lived, meditated, studied and worked in fantastical buildings designed for them by prominent architects including Richard Requa and Arthur and Alfred Heinemen. Nestled in the hills of Beachwood Canyon, the community of 300-odd souls known as Krotona was for a time in the early 20th century the national headquarters of the esoteric, high-minded Theosophical Society.

Hippie ways of life