As a teenager commuting by foot to his volunteer job in Muir Woods, Michael Toivonen didn’t know he was walking right past Druid Heights—the neighborhood of artists and thinkers that would one day absorb his life. In fact, Toivonen, now 65, didn’t know what to make of the rows of mailboxes in the middle of the forest: “I thought, Huh, that’s weird. What’s down there?”
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A bohemian living community nestled in the Muir Woods, Druid Heights was built on a five-acre plot purchased in 1954 by pioneering lesbian poet Elsa Gidlow and builder and musician Roger Somers. Over the next several years, Somers and fellow resident Ed Stiles would build about a dozen structures, including homes, a workshop, and a rounded library. What really makes Druid Heights stand out is the sophistication of the architecture. Think Eastern meditative sanctuary meets art nouveau flourishes, but surrounded by trees. A far cry from the rustic-log-cabin aesthetic often seen in the wilds of Northern California.
In the 1960s and ’70s, the village became a magnet for creatives and iconoclasts, both to visit and to live. The woods were peaceful, the rent was cheap. Recreational drugs were plenty. Residents practiced cooperative living: in lieu of some city services, they engineered a water-pumping system advanced enough to support a hot tub. “Community may seem a big word for an interrelating nucleus of fewer than twelve people including children,” Gidlow wrote in a 1971 issue of the San Francisco Examiner’s California Living magazine. “Still, we prefer the term to the loaded ones: commune, tribe, family. We are none of these.”
People have come and gone, including sex work advocate Margo St. James, writer Gary Snyder, and religious philosopher and writer Alan Watts (whose ashes were partially buried on the grounds after he died, in 1973). But today, Druid Heights has only one remaining long-term resident: woodworker Stiles, who arrived in 1965 with his wife, Marilyn, a sculptor who passed away in 2018.
In 1977, the National Park Service (NPS) expanded the boundaries of Muir Woods National Monument, engulfing the Druid Heights grounds. Residents were forced to sell ownership through eminent domain but were given the option to remain there for life. Decades later, most have died. Under the custodianship of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA), the Mucha-like buildings are now abandoned, decaying, and overgrown by nature.
One man has stepped in to fight for Druid Heights’ preservation (not that anyone asked him to): Toivonen, a semiretired woodworker and history enthusiast. Toivonen cofounded the Save Druid Heights advocacy group in 2017, when he finally learned the name of the mysterious neighborhood of this youth. The group’s ideal outcome includes finding “a sugar person,” says Toivonen, to take up the cause and cover the costs of refurbishment. It hasn’t been all bad, with successes like raising media awareness. But without legal representation or sufficient funds, Save Druid Heights has been met with resistance at nearly every turn.
Toivonen appears to be the group’s most active member. He’s also the most frustrated by its lack of progress. In 2020, Toivonen petitioned for Druid Heights’ inclusion on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s annual list of “America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.” To do this, Toivonen needed to obtain statements of support from notable community groups. The San Francisco GLBT Historical Society—partial keeper of Gidlow’s archives—would not issue a statement of support. Ditto for the Mill Valley Historical Society. The registration effort failed, as did another attempt, in 2021.
And then there’s the GGNRA. The organization has not yet reciprocated Toivonen’s preservation efforts. He feels that the organization is batting him away.
“I thought the park service would like me,” says Toivonen.
Another major hurdle for Toivonen: not everyone is convinced that Druid Heights needs saving.
Stiles and his wife were shocked to hear about the formation of Save Druid Heights. “I don’t see how you can circumvent the NPS and their commitment to us,” wrote Marilyn Stiles in a 2017 email to Toivonen. “I would like to see the area return to nature and ‘Druid Heights’ become a memory of the illusion it always was.”
But for the tenacious Toivonen, historic preservation is a personal matter. He’s a direct descendant of Robert Calef, a late-17th-century merchant whose book, More Wonders of the Invisible World, was critical of the Puritan prosecutors of the Salem witch trials. Toivonen says it was among the first books burned in America. He keeps a copy alongside many other centuries-old tomes—including original copies of Gidlow’s poetry—in an antique barrister bookcase.
“It’s not just about books,” Toivonen says. “It’s also about places and preserving the stories, not just those of the military, government leaders, and people cleaving towards the mainstream of American society.”
More than any one person, Toivonen’s most formidable antagonist is time. Stiles is the last person alive with the right to live in Druid Heights. After he’s gone, the beautiful architecture will deteriorate (without intervention) into oblivion. But who will mourn when it’s gone?•
Zachary Bernstein is the managing editor of the Montecito Journal and the Riv. He’s previously written for the Rupture, X-R-A-Y, and Los Angeleno. As a songwriter, he’s toured all over North America as the Bicycats. His original musical, Disasteroid!, was published by Stage Rights.
