The timing was perfect for hippies. San Francisco was getting pricey. So tons of them hitch hiked up north to a land where you could drive a VW bus 20 minutes in almost any direction and find yourself in a gloriously beautiful setting –– you could take a quick hike through misty woods, pluck a couple psychedelic mushrooms, and bliss out naked in a hot spring. 

Up until that point, Portland was a rough, blue collar manufacturing and timber town. But so many hippies invaded that the city’s personality changed. 

The hippies turned their craftsman houses into goat barns, pottery studios, rooming houses, and mini ashrams. They didn’t have the money (or inclination) to tear the houses down and build modern houses, but they put enough love and care into them to keep them from falling completely apart. 

35 years later, the rest of the country discovered this little time warp and what it had become. Disaffected young people from all over the US started moving into the city in hopes that they, too, could live a life where a kombucha culture got more attention than a time sheet.