Huckleberries Online

OTV: Idaho’s Woodstock Hit Farragut

Posted by DFO

March 23, 2009 8:07 a.m. • 37 comments

It’s often said that major cultural trends sometimes seem to take a few extra years before they’re absorbed into our beautiful but somewhat isolated cranny of the world. By and large, the flower-power counterculture revolution didn’t hit North Idaho until the scorching summer of 1971, several years after the Summer of Love brought long scraggly hair, LSD, and groovy color combinations like magenta, goldenrod and chartreuse to the forefront of America’s collective consciousness. When the movement finally arrived here, it landed with quite a bang in the form of a drug-saturated, free-love fueled “be-in” and rock festival staged during that year’s 4th of July weekend at Farragut State Park on Lake Pend Oreille. It’s an occasion that seems especially burned into the memories of everyone who lived in the area at the time; a watershed moment when sleepy North Idaho had its safety bubble irreparably ruptured and was forced to finally acknowledge that the times were indeed a-changin’/OrangeTV, Get Out! North Idaho. More here.

Question: Were you a hippy?

37 comments on this post so far. Add yours!

Liz on March 22 at 12:42 a.m.
A wannabe.
OrangeTV on March 22 at 1:50 a.m.
More where? No linky.
Stickman on March 22 at 8:57 a.m.
Of course.
OrangeTV on March 22 at 10:48 a.m.
Here’s the link to the rest of the story: http://www.getoutnorthidaho.com
Bent on March 22 at 10:59 a.m.
I was too young to be a hippy, but my aunts where full fleged hippies. In fact, they sold tie-dyed items at craft fairs and they even went to the real woodstock…
BigMike on March 22 at 1:25 p.m.
I own a VW brown (earth color) van. Sometimes I overhear kids say, ” Look, there is a hippy van!!!” I wonder if that makes me, since I’m driving it, still a hippy.
JamesBond on March 22 at 1:52 p.m.
I have always liked hippy chicks.
JohnA on March 22 at 2:45 p.m.
JB: “I have always liked hippy chicks.”

You’d have loved the U of I in the mid-70s, JB. it was not uncommon to see ‘em in droves: peasant dress, hiking boots and braided hair, the leashed German Shepherd in tow. Even though I was a long-haired type myself, they were a tad too bohemian for me, I’m afraid.
GaryIngram on March 22 at 3:20 p.m.
The flower-powers were so happy that the state took a hands off attitude that they presented Governor Cecil Andrus with a watermelon at a news conference/ceremony at the old North Shore Convention Center when it was over. Not one of Idaho’s proudest moments. The Farragut Report found that the whole event was staged to expand the northwest market for distribution and use, which the record shows it did. Mission accomplished!

The official government response was to keep the law breaking contained and not agitate participants to move into neighboring communities.
Sam on March 22 at 3:50 p.m.
What were you doing back then, Gary?
Arpie on March 22 at 4:45 p.m.
What do you mean were? I was married by a Universal Life minister.
Stickman on March 22 at 7:08 p.m.
I liked Sam’s comments, though I try to never to say anything against Gary, as I like him so much. Gary, what were you doing back then? Some of us Truly want to know. If you ask me, I will always tell in detail. But that’s another story.
hhuseland on March 22 at 8:45 p.m.
Not all Universal life Ministers are stoners, nor are many of them hippies. I was never a hippie, but I am a universal Life Minister. Some, like myself, become ordained for the purpose of being able to perform marriages. Many people that are not church goers, still find justice of the peace or judge type marriages a bit to impersonal. I have performed exactly one marriage, but am available for others by request.
GaryIngram on March 22 at 9:45 p.m.
Sam, I will not surround myself with mystery of my comings and goings back then. So Sam, I was chairman of the Kootenai Republican Central Committee and raising a young family.

My vice chair and I took my boat out on the lake and took pictures of people screwing on the beach, went into the park and witnessed the selling of drugs and selling beer and wine without a license, watched young people drunk or stoned and out of control, witnessed a large cache of entry money being collected and whisked away to places unknown in an old pickup with hippie folks in charge of the steering wheel.

Oh, there is more, but this is quite enough, I guess. I’ve made reference to a citizens panel that investigated and chronicled its findings in a booklet called, The Farragut Report. It is very thorough and factual. It’s author is Stanley Crow, an attorney in Boise.
cantyoureadthesigns on March 22 at 9:50 p.m.
“Naturally, officials were convinced that the sole reason organizers planned the whole event was to bring the dirty drug trade into squeaky clean North Idaho.

Contrarily, Farragut park director John Greig was delighted saying “As far as I’m concerned, they can have one of these every weekend, all summer. The picnickers left the park cleaner than the Boy Scouts did and we can really use all the money it collects at the entrance.”

That’s gold, right there, Patrick.

I presume Gary Ingram was leading a pack of nice, clean, Boy Scouts back then, “altar boys” all of various stripes and denominations.
Arpie on March 22 at 10:08 p.m.
Joan Baez played a concert at the Panida in Sandpoint tonight. She did not deny that she was at Farragut thirty eight years ago.

Tonight’s show was amazing. A living legend, still hitting the high notes. She had the sold out crowd of aging hippies wrapped around her finger. She ended the night leading us all in Amazing Grace. The Panida never sounded sweeter.

I’ll bet even Gary would have liked it.
Buddy Bob on March 23 at 8:39 a.m.
I certainly was a hippy! There is still a spark of that energy to this day - especially peace and love and “Come Together!” It was an interesting time and I have often wondered how it dissipated so quickly?

I was at the Farragut Universal Life Church picnic. In context of the day it was not as out of place as it seems it does now in reading about all that took place. It was very interestingthough… That is for sure!

By the way, Farragut might have been the focal point, but flower power hit North Idaho before that!

Peace and love,

Buddy Bob
Sam on March 23 at 6:32 p.m.
I wasn’t trying to insult or anything, just asking a question based on Gary’s earlier comment. That’s all, kids.
Escapee on March 23 at 9:57 p.m.
Me a hippie? No…although I sure loved most all the music from that era. That must say something about my thought processes…I didn’t need drugs to get turned on. Growing up in North Idaho with authoritarian parental figures, there was no way I could’ve become a hippie. Besides, I was too young. I think I’m more of a hippie now. I don’t think I would’ve lasted a day and a half, let alone 3 days at Woodstock. It’s that whole thing about the mud. But the music was great. Okay, now I’m repeating myself…

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D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.