Long before the Irons brothers roamed Kauai’s North Shore, the surfer’s road to paradise was paved by hippies who’d had enough of Vietnam and the capitalist society, and decided to move as far away as possible, to a place where they hoped nobody would find them. The North Shore of Kauai was as idyllic and remote as it gets in this country, and it just happened to have uncrowded world-class waves as well. As surfers began to hear about this paradise at the end of the road, and after SURFER magazine featured a story on the place, small communities of hippies began to develop on Kauai … Details
They created order without rules. . . A clothing-optional, pot-friendly, “grow your own” treehouse village at the end of Kauai.
In 1969, thirteen young mainlanders — refugees from campus riots, Vietnam War protests and police brutality — fled to Kauai. Before long this little tribe of men, women and children were arrested and sentenced to ninety days hard labor for having no money and no home. Island resident Howard Taylor, brother of actress Elizabeth, bailed out the group and invited them to camp on his vacant ocean front land. Howard then left them on their own, without any restrictions, regulations or supervision. Soon waves of hippies, surfers and troubled Vietnam vets found their way to this clothing-optional, pot-friendly tree house village at the end of the road on the island’s North Shore.
In 1977, the government condemned the village to make way for a State park. Within a few years the jungle reclaimed Taylor Camp, leaving little but memories of “the best days of our lives”.
TAYLOR CAMP reveals a community that created order without rules, rejecting materialism for the healing power of nature. We come to understand the significance Taylor Camp’s eight-year existence through interviews made 30-years later after the film makers tracked down the campers, their neighbors and the government officials who finally got rid of them