By Mike Rosso
Last night I began watching the Netflix series Wild Wild Country, a six-part documentary on the Rajneesh commune in rural Oregon in the early 1980s.
This story has fascinated me since those early days as I had a friend in Durango who fell in love with a member of that cult, began dressing in various shades of red and orange, sold all of his belongings, and moved to Oregon.
By Kenneth Jessen
Hippies are usually thought of in negative terms, especially when it comes to any kind of work ethic. To run across a town – ragged and run down or not – founded by hippies is certainly a rare find. During the late 1960s, landowner Dan Archuleta allowed a hippie colony to move into his goat sheds along the north side of C.R. 580 a little over a mile west of Red Wing. The hippies named the place Archuletaville and made improvements to the property. A row of south-facing stone sheds was enclosed and windows added. They may have added several free-standing log cabins, but these may have been moved from another location. There is also an adobe house.
