Druid Heights: The US' hidden LGBTQ+ community

In 2022, nearly 800,000 people from around the world visited Muir Woods National Monument just north of San Francisco, California, to marvel at the groves of towering redwoods – among the tallest and oldest trees in the world.

But just a mile and a half from the park's entrance in a separate part of the park, another significant site remains largely unknown, despite its prominent role in LGBTQ+ and counterculture history. Here, tucked deep in a canyon and slowly sinking back into the forest, lie the decaying wooden remnants of Druid Heights, a trailblazing bohemian community that some consider the US' only LGBTQ+ Historic District (a collection of buildings of historical or architectural significance.)

Founded in 1954 by lesbian poet Elsa Gidlow and builder Roger Somers, Druid Heights became a cultural hub that profoundly influenced a multitude of cultural currents during its 30-year heyday, from gay liberation and radical feminism to Zen Buddhism. Like a West Coast version of the Hotel Chelsea or Algonquin Round Table, these 18 architecturally distinctive buildings hidden in the woods served as home, school, workshop and intellectual incubator to an eclectic circle of leading alternative thinkers of their time. The community's importance extended through waves of cultural change, from the Beatnik poets and philosophers of the late 1950s through the psychedelic and spiritual explorations of the '60s and early '70s to the gay liberation, radical feminism and gender politics of the late '70s and early '80s.