Seeing is believing. This place was just east of Kee Beach. Occasionally I would camp over in the dunes between the beach and Taylor Camp and sometimes wander down to mix with the residents.
I spent only a few afternoons and evenings at Taylor Camp in 1971 and '72, but they were memorable. I remember spending one sunset in his three-story tree house in tall ironwood tree. It was like a cluster of bamboo geodesic domes covered in plastic.
For the whole community there was a one toilet and it was on a tall platform in an open field in sight of the road. AS you'll see nudity was the norm.
Taylor Camp Tramp - by Mustang Mike
FILM SYNOPSIS
“Taylor Camp” is a feature documentary (as well as a book to be published by Serindia) that takes the viewer on a journey through the ultimate hippie fantasy - a crazy quilt community of tree houses on the beach at the end of the road on Kauai. It’s about the rejection of American values only to repaint them with long hair, marijuana and a vegetarian “clothing-optional” lifestyle in the era of flower power, anti-war riots and the Age
of Aquarius.
Taylor Camp was born in the spring of 1969 when artist / oceanographer Howard Taylor (brother of actress Elizabeth) bailed out of jail a rag-tag band of young mainlanders arrested for vagrancy and invited them to live on his land; thus setting off immigrating waves of hippies, surfers, seekers and psychologically
scarred Vietnam vets to Kauai's North Shore.
30 years later, we relive the growth of the camp through storytelling and interviews with the campers and their local neighbors. The interviews are woven into period music, re-enactments, original footage and striking black and white images of the camp from 1971 to 1977, plus a bare-knuckle examination of Taylor Camp's impact on the local community.
Condemned by the State in 1977, government workers torched the camp before the last resident moved out, leaving behind ashes and magical memories of “the best days of our lives”
