In the mid-1960s, around 1964, the “Big Three” southern Humboldt ranches were broken down and subdivided, all being in the tens of thousands of acres each. Prosper Ridge (owned by Chief Wally Matthews), Panther Gap, and Ettersburg / Whitethorne (then owned by Albert Etter of nearby Ettersburg) were all suddenly for sale. And for cheap. […]

The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, started by my friends Bobby Bel and Edward Padilla (and others) in Laguna Beach, was just that: a Brotherhood. It started when LSD was legal. Its history has been maintained more accurately than that of the Cannabis trade in Humboldt. Ed has released numerous books and interviews detailing it, and […]

The Summer of Love, in the ’67, was the beginning of the end for hippies in San Francisco. By 1970 all the major heads (including the Grateful Dead) had left or moved across the Golden Gate into Marin County. The Back to the Land movement was in full swing by 1971-ish and people were leaving […]

It was clear in the sixties that the powers-that-be learned nothing from the Alcohol Prohibition in the United States. Mainly aimed at roping in Cannabis to the illegal status the Paris Convention set for cocaine and opiates in the 1930s, the United Nations convened the (first) “Single treaty on narcotic drugs” in 1961. Naturally, the […]

Tim Leary, as you might remember, did not rot in jail after his arrest for marijuana in the 1960s. Leary was involved in no less than three drug arrests in the mid- to late-60s. In an apparent set up, Leary, his wife Rosemary, and his daughter were arrested in December 1965, at the Laredo, Texas […]