The Rajneesh Experience: A Report

SQUIRMING THROUGH THE SAGEBRUSH, state highway 218 snakes its way from west to east for forty-three miles from Shaniko via Antelope to Fossil in the sparsely settled North central highlands of the state of Oregon.Four miles beyond Antelope, a narrow and little used rutted dirt road ambles toward the John Day River and the scrub Juniper pastures of the Big Muddy Ranch.In the mid-1800's this had been the primary road for both stagecoach and freight wagon between The Dalles on the Columbia River and the John Day high country in the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon.Twenty-eight miles from Antelope, the road crossed Muddy Creek.It was here, amidst the cottonwoods, juniper, sagebrush, and jackrabbits, the early settlers built their ranchhouse, bunkhouses, barns, and corrals as headquarters for the Big Muddy Ranch.By the 1980's the Big Muddy Ranch was a misused, abused, bankrupt, and abandoned operation.Overgrazed, eroded, and robbed of its limited natural resources, the semi-arid Big Muddy Ranch was for sale.As offered to the public, the ranch contained all of the watershed for Muddy Creek, over 100 square miles of wildly dramatic, exuberantly beautiful, volcanically formed landscape; but with little of its original value remaining as an operating cattle and sheep ranch.It also offered the remoteness, the isolation, and the idealistic setting the disciples of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh were seeking.The asking price for the Big Muddy Ranch was $7.5 million, but in June of 1981, when the negotiating was finished, the down payment came to $1.5 million; and a reported total price of $5.8 million was paid for 64,299 acres of deeded land and 17,000 acres of leased Bureau of Land