Free Love Canyon![]() In the 1960's a group of travelers stopped their journey within the canyon created by a long abandoned sulfur mining operation. Here amidst bubbling pools of sulfuric acid and the toxic reek of hydrogen sulfide they created a home for themselves: Free Love Canyon they called it. ![]() I first heard about Free Love Canyon from the property manager of the area we were staying at. When I inquired further about its current status, he became evasive and told me not to look around too much there and referred to some trouble they'd had in the area in the past. My curiosity only further piqued, I began my own search for information on Free Love Canyon. Very little turned up and I only heard one other story: that it had once been inhabited by a roving band of hippies in the 1960's and 70's, and that "they weren't your friendly kind of hippies, if you take my meaning." When my chance came to pay Free Love Canyon a visit finally came I jumped on it. In predictable horror film fashion, dark clouds were gathering over the mountains as I pulled down the dirt into the ghost town. A dilapidated pallisade fence made from sticks surrounded the area and the houses it enclosed were a hodge podge of strange unfamiliar architectures mixed with more modern trailer homes. As my car shut off, the forest and mountains seemed quiet; the slam of the door, the crunch of my boots seemed deafening in the silence. I told myself that wildlife must have avoided the area because of the sulfurous odors that drifted lazily up from the sickly green pools scattered about. Creeping about a few of the houses near the road's edge I worked up my courage as I made my way further into town. I began to notice things like half used bottles of shampoo, and fresh elk bones, picked clean of meat lying about. I began to feel a distinct unease as I approached the last row of trailers, no longer visible from the main road. These just seemed too 'lived in' to have been lain abandoned and exposed to the elements for the last 30 years. I stood, facing empty windows, caught in indecision; my desire to know what happened here, to find a clue to the past, fought against an instinctual fear that had welled up inside of me. As I stood, torn, the first drops of rain began to fall, fat cold drops slapping my skin. In an instant a downpour had started and I hurried back to the car. Free Love Canyon remained a mystery behind me. Was the story I sought hidden in that last row of homes? Or was it something more sinister? ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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