Early ‘70s shots from Wheeler’s Ranch in Sonoma County by Bob Fitch and Robert Altman. It was a 320-acre commune on Coleman Valley Road in Occidental, north of Bodega Bay, on land owned by Bill Wheeler, a painter from Connecticut who inherited a fortune from his family’s early sewing machine business.
When the nearby Morningstar Ranch commune was shut down by authorities, Wheeler welcomed people there to live on his land. Before long there were 300 hippies inhabiting self-erected cabins and makeshift structures on his remote property.
One day in May of 1973, while Wheeler was out of town, bulldozers sent by county officials rumbled onto the land and smashed his house and studio. When he returned a few days later, he and the residents set fire to the remaining structures before the bulldozers were set to come back.
Wheeler then moved to Bolinas, and came back a few years later after a friend had bought out the neighbor who had started the county crackdown. He took up art again there and enjoyed success as a landscape painter.
