Druid Heights

Druid Heights was a counterculture enclave in Marin County, California, U.S., The property was purchased in 1954 by poet Elsa Gidlow, and subsequently the land was split with carpenter Roger Somers and his wife Mary.

[1] Druid Heights was, by its founder Elsa Gidlow, jokingly called an "unintentional" community located on the southeast flank of Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California, about a mile from the Pacific Ocean.

[1] It also, through the efforts of Elsa Gidlow, became a refuge for many famous figures of the San Francisco Renaissance including her friends Kenneth Rexroth and former resident of the Heights, Pulitzer Prize winner Gary Snyder.

[7]: 136 Seeing a broader purpose for her portion of the land, The Society For Comparative Philosophy, begun in 1962, was established here as a non-profit by Elsa Gidlow and Alan Watts aiming for a broad vision approach to "studies of humanity's relation to nature and the universe.

Gidlow had planned to turn Druid Heights into a pay-as-you-go retreat for artists, but after the National Park Service acquired the land using eminent domain in 1977, it could no longer host temporary guests, only legal tenants.

The Alan Watts Library
The Goddess Meditation Hut