I found the commune from 'Wild Wild Country' on Google Earth, and it looks startlingly different today
Spoilers for Neflix's Wild Wild Country abound in this, so if you'd rather not get spoiled on this true story, stop reading!
Like a lot of other people, I've spent the last week binging the new Netflix documentary series Wild Wild Country. And it left me with a lot of questions.
If you haven't heard of it, Wild Wild Country investigates the sensational Rajneeshee commune that sprang up in the early 1980s in extremely rural Oregon. Thousands of followers of the spiritual leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh created a settlement called Rajneeshpuram, which ended up antagonizing a local town called Antelope and later the entirety of Wasco county.
It's a bewildering story about sex, drugs, guns, poisonings, murder plots, and a machiavellian fight to keep the commune alive. If that interests you, watch it.
Watching this show hit a little home for me as I used to live in Eastern Oregon and semi-close to where Rajneeshpuram existed. I had never heard of it, and so, while I was still on episode three or four, I decided to find out what the commune looks like today using Google Earth.
At first, it was difficult to spot. It wasn't as close to Antelope as I thought.
I searched for "Rashneeshpuram" and was surprised when the Rajneesh Airport showed up, in the hills southeast of Antelope.
I expected to find the remnants of all the living spaces built to house the 7,000-some people who had lived there doing whatever they did. But instead, it looked like a completely different odd complex.
The blue dot just east of center in this image interested me, because I didn't remember seeing a pool in the Wild Wild Country footage, so I zoomed in.
Wait.
Is that a...?
Water slide???
I certainly didn't remember seeing a water slide of this magnitude anywhere in the old footage. You'd think they would highlight the fact that this free love commune would have built and enjoyed what appears to be an enormous water slide.
It only took a search or two to discover that what was the city of Rajneeshpunam is now a kids' summer camp owned and operated by Christian-based youth organization Young Life. It's now called Washington Family Ranch, and the vibe looks way different than the Rajneeshees, but also doesn't.
It turns out, in the last 10 minutes of Wild Wild Country's last episode, they talk about this odd transformation. And the parallel between the land's past and present is pretty unambiguous.
"It's kind of like a cult, too," Antelope Mayor John Silvertooth says of the Young Life camp in the show. "But they're much better neighbors than the Rajneeshees."
He also mentioned how Rajneeshpuram was dedicated to free love and open sex, and the Young Life camp preaches strict abstinence. It's a pretty hard swing on the pendulum of tolerance.
So, if you didn't make it to the end of the show, now you know how that odd part of the country is being used.
And maybe you can join me in imagining how much those Rajneeshees would have loved that damn water slide.
Topics Netflix
I have done neat stuff all over these United States from sailing lessons on the Puget Sound to motorcycle maintenance on the backroads of upstate New York. My professional experience extends from newspaper reporting in the mountains of Eastern Oregon to fixing espresso machines throughout Kentucky. I also have kept a cat alive for 10 years.
