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Taylor Camp, a small settlement established on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, was first founded by a small group of mainland Americans in 1969 – refugees from campus riots, Vietnam War protests, and police brutality – who fled to Kauai to escape political unrest and the strong feelings of governmental dissatisfaction happening in the mainland. At the time, Howard Taylor (brother of the actress Elizabeth Taylor) owned about seven acres of land on Kauai’s North Shore, and he invited the group of young men, women, and children who had been arrested for vagrancy to set up camp and live rent-free on his property.

 

New settlers were arriving in droves to the camp by the next few months, helping establish a community that created order without rules, politics, or bills to pay, rejecting materialism for the healing power of nature. Decisions were even made according to the “vibes”! They were all in search of an existence separated from the violence that dominated mainstream media and life on the mainland. As to how everyone lived, the camp was a treehouse village. People would fish, grow their own vegetable gardens, and head to convenience stores on the island for any additional supplies. The hippies’ children attended the local school near the North Shore, and the community even had a midwife and a medic living among them.

 

Then, author and photographer John Wehrheim came to the camp in 1971 to photograph the alternative community. “Taylor Camp wasn’t a commune,” Wehrheim writes in the introduction to his 2006 book entitled Taylor Camp. “It had no guru, no clearly defined leadership, and never had a single voice. It had no written ordinances. It wasn’t a democracy. It was much more than that: a community guided by a spirit that created order without rules.” His book and the documentary he made complementary to his work four years later, were created to preserve the spirit of the settlement. “I tried not to romanticize Taylor Camp,” Wehrheim had also written. “Anyone who reads the book or looks at the film will find a story that includes addiction, disease, alcoholism, violence, and sexual abuse: the same things that one finds in any community.”

 

However, same with every paradise, the era of Taylor Camp eventually came to an end. Some of the island locals tolerated the hippies, while others, not so much. There were many complaints. It stood for eight years, until in 1977 when it was burned to the ground by the local Hawaiian authorities to make way for a State Park (now Na Pali State Park today). The 8-by-10 selenium-toned archival silver prints are amongst the few prized memorabilia that the residents have of those eight years spent on the island.

 

Today, while Taylor Camp may be torched to the ground and retaken by the jungle, its significance regarding many socio-political ideologies is fairly remarkable. Its eight-year existence proved to have been a beacon of hope, of peace, most especially for those who have buckled under the political unrest of their generation during then.