Social Cohesion & the Bohemian Grove
The Power Elite at Summer Camp

by G. William Domhoff, U.C. Santa Cruz

The Bohemian Grove is a 2,700-acre virgin redwood grove in Northern California, 75 miles north of San Francisco (map), where the rich, the powerful, and the famous visit with each other during the last two weeks of July while camping out in cabins and tents -- and drinking heavily.

It's an Elks Club for the rich; a fraternity party in the woods; a boy scout camp for old guys, complete with an initiation ceremony and a totem animal, the owl. It's owned by the Bohemian Club, which was founded in San Francisco in 1872. The Bohemians started going on their little retreat shortly after the club was founded; it became big-time by the 1880s, and it continues today.

(For an excellent first-hand account of the Bohemian Grove by a journalist from Spy magazine who snuck into the encampment in 1989, click here.)

Social Cohesion & the Bohemian Grove

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