Counterculture Accepted In Oregon -- 29 Years After Its Creation, Takilma Comes Of Age In Quiet Illinois Valley

MEDFORD, Ore. - Early in the winter of 1968, Southern Oregon newspapers reported "bearded, barefoot hippies" moving into the Illinois Valley and quoted a Josephine County sheriff's comment that hippies "were detrimental to any community." Signs soon appeared in store windows proclaiming, "We Do Not Solicit Hippie Patronage."

Despite the cold shoulder, the hippies stayed. And in the 29 years since the first long-haired and tie-dyed pioneers created the community of Takilma, it has become an important source of talent, creativity and energy.

Takilmans founded a medical clinic, a school, a fire station, an environmental organization and a classical orchestra that benefit people living far beyond their settlement of 300 to 400 residents.

The snarling signs have been gone for years.

"We started out as this sort of outside group and sort of worked our way in," said Jonny Klein, a Takilman since 1968. "Little by little, we were accepted."

Still, many were surprised last March when Takilman Dave Toler - head of an alternative school - took 53 percent of votes cast countywide to defeat an incumbent member of the Three Rivers School Board.

And although Toler took office with little fanfare, his election marked a watershed in Josephine County history.

Takilma has come of age.

Hippies stand out

A ring of jagged peaks, blue in the summer haze, surround the Illinois Valley, and within their embrace live many kinds of people - millworkers and hippies, loggers and retirees, welfare recipients and small-business owners - but, as always, the hippies stand out.

"It's like having two different cultures," said Leonard Frick, owner of the Holiday Motel in Kerby and a past president of the Illinois Valley Chamber of Commerce. "They have a different lifestyle than the average people."

Counterculture values remain strong in Takilma - vegetarianism, Radio Free Takilma, solstice celebrations, food cooperatives, an all-comers newsletter - with plenty of long hair and beards in evidence. But along with the odd dome or two and rooftops that jut at weird angles, satellite dishes now sprout from ridgepoles and roadsides, and many unattended phones announce the presence of voice mail.

"Most people were dragged into the media world by having kids," said Jim Rich, a Takilman since 1974 who teaches music at Rogue Community College and founded the Jefferson Baroque Orchestra.

Underneath it all, Frick says, residents of the Illinois Valley have learned that no matter how different people may look, all people are pretty much the same: "Their concern is the upraising of their children just like anyone else."

When lightning-sparked wildfires consumed 9,500 acres of forest near Takilma in 1987, Rich was station captain of the Illinois Valley Fire Department in Takilma.

"It's when we found out how many friends we had in town. The community at large just jumped in with both feet to help Takilma out," he recalls. "They would drive up, open their trunk, take out their gas cans and chain saws, and just leave them. It was months before we got all those pieces of equipment returned."

Exploding a myth

The year of the fire, Klein donated some blood with the help of a nurse who had been "a notorious hippie hater" but suddenly proved very friendly.

"What I realized was that now we're their hippies and we're OK," he recalls.

"For the outside community, it was really seeing a lot of people who worked hard that exploded a myth," Rich said. "Once they saw that the work ethic was something they had in common, they were willing to let the other stuff go by - the weird hair, the weird clothes."

Perhaps no institution is more beloved by Takilmans than the alternative Dome School, in a handsome building crafted by community residents.

"That was a community effort to build that building. It's a straight-up-the-code proper school building," boasts Klein, alluding to the Takilmans' legendary battles with county building inspectors.

That pride extends into the wider community. Asked directions to the school, an old-timer offers, "Oh, beautiful. They're wonderful people up there."

When Kristmas Baker moved from Oroville, Calif., four months ago with her husband and son, she'd heard "mostly bad stuff' about Takilma: "It has a lot of remnants of hippieville. Maybe a lot of people had cash (marijuana) crops."

But after sending her son to the school's summer program, she's sold on the school and the community.

"For the most part, the people are really nice. And the community activities are really great," she said. "If we move to town, we'll send our son here."

A year ago, state officials announced that a site near Takilma and Cave Junction was under consideration for a new 1,600-bed medium-security prison, rousing Illinois Valley residents to action. Takilmans took the lead in researching the issue and testifying about their findings at public hearings.

When 600 people showed up at Illinois Valley High School last November and succeeded in making their case that the prison should be elsewhere, most of Takilma and the Illinois Valley were united.

Not that all differences are settled. Environmental issues especially remain divisive. But the unified stand against the prison and Toler's election soon after signal that times have changed - again.

And now that Takilma has come of age, Toler predicts there may be great things in store for all of Illinois Valley's communities: "If we can respect our differences and use them as a community, then we will do wonders."