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FIELD REPORT
The Center for Land Use Interpretation
is dependent on a network of volunteers and supporters all over
the world, many of whom submit information on unusual and exemplary
locations they encounter in their travels. Unsolicited field reports
and site characterizations are welcome, and a list of sites in
specific regions that need further looking into can be sent to
you if you want to volunteer some field research time. Information
packets for field researchers are available by request.
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Guard shack at the former Rajneesh Ranch
CLUI photo by Igor Vamos
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Field Report by Igor Vamos and Melinda Stone
Tucked away in the Eastern Oregon high desert lies
one of the nation's newest ghost towns, the former Rajneesh Ranch.
Between 1981 and 1986 a small, desolate valley twelve
miles from Antelope, Oregon was transformed into a thriving town
of 3,000 residents, with a 4,500 foot paved airstrip, a 44 acre
reservoir, an 88,000 square foot meeting hall, and a charismatic
Indian guru who owned more than 90 Rolls Royce cars.
The Big Muddy Ranch, situated across Wasco and Jefferson
counties, was bought by the Rashneesh Foundation International
for $5.75 million. At that point the town was not zoned for anything
more than cattle ranching. Regardless, the Bhagwan spent $120
million in order to ready the land for his devoted followers.
The community grew quickly in the early eighties,
as followers of the Bhagwan Shree Rashneesh poured in from all
over the world. When met by resistance from the people of nearby
Antelope (with a population of forty in 1980), the Bhagwan's followers
steamrolled local interests by buying enough of the town to control
the vote. The town's new residents immediately renamed Antelope,
which became "Rashneesh" until the Bhagwan and followers
were kicked out by the Justice Department in the fall of 1985,
at which time the remaining locals voted the old name back in.
Today, at the Antelope General Store (which for
four years was known as Zorba-the-Bhudda Rajneesh Restaurant),
an ascerbic old man grudgingly accommodates the curious by handing
out copies of a hastily scrawled map leading to the dirt roads
and 800,000 square feet of empty buildings at what is once again
called "the Big Muddy Ranch". When asked what the commune
looks like now, with a frown he asks "Do you like abandoned
air bases?"
In 1991, the ranch and it's sordid past was purchased
for $3.65 million by Dennis Washington, a Montana rancher and
owner of the Anaconda Copper Mine. Since then, Mr. Washington
has grazed several hundred head of cattle on the property while
trying to give it to the State of Oregon, or anyone who can accept
a charitable donation. While the State has considered turning
the nearly new abandoned town into a labor camp for boys, this
use appears unlikely due to local resistance. The Nature Conservancy,
when offered the land, had to refuse due liabilities associated
with the structures at the site, most of which were built without
any regard to safety or building codes. Rumors circulate of below
ground tunnels, toxic waste, and undiscovered stockpiles of weapons.
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