With its emphasis on individualism and a legacy of folks who have imagined what a “perfect” society ought to look like, America has been a fertile ground for numerous Utopian communities. Here you see a picture of the first rural hippie commune in 1969: this was Drop City, Colorado.
Formed in 1965 when three people — Gene Bernofsky, JoAnn Bernofsky, and Clark Richert — bought seven acres of land near Trinidad, CO, Drop City was an artists’ commune founded in response to what they thought was an overly materialistic culture, and the founders were decidedly anti-(Vietnam) war. Seeking an idealized place with neither hierarchies nor exclusive membership, Drop City’s members developed geodesic dome houses out of recycled materials that included repurposed lumber and old car-roofs.
The artists in Drop City borrowed designs from Buckminster Fuller, and came up with “drop art”, which entailed chucking artwork off of buildings to make art a spontaneous part of quotidian existence. The phrase “tune in, turn on, drop out” only came afterwards as a phrase coined by Timothy Leary.
The open-door policy of Drop City began to attract many tourists and interested hippies, which the original members didn’t want — they liked being isolated — but couldn’t prevent because of their accepting ideology. So, they left Drop City in 1969. The area for a short time became populated by transient people, and then was abandoned. By 1973, the Utopian commune Drop City had become a ghost town.
