Bohemian Grove

The Bohemian Club of San Francisco is one of the Bay Area’s best-kept secrets, and is considered to be one of the premier private men-only clubs in America. It boasts an elite membership, past and present, of some of the nation’s foremost power brokers, policy-makers, and several generations of Fortune 500 leaders.

Within the sanctuary of the exclusive club, men of both patrilineal wealth and big business self-achieved titans enjoy the camaraderie of friendship and success. The Club is unabashedly a personal retreat for the elite socio-economic and well-connected men in American society who can relax in the milieu of like-minded men.

This gentlemen’s club with an old-world atmosphere of interlocking business and the arts, and imbued with the spirit of gentry and civility, attracted the Crockers, Spreckles and Hearsts, as well as railroad, shipping and city builders. It has not deviated from its original mission to attract the most powerful and influential men of the moment.
At any given time there is a fifteen-year waiting list of about 20,000 sponsored applications in the pipeline to be vetted by a committee prior to acceptance. And with an initiation fee of $25,000, and about $600 in monthly dues, it doesn’t even faze the eager male aspirants.

An invitation to join the Bohemian Club is often a validation of one’s success and standing in society, by other men of influence who are part of the powerful network. As one of the world’s most exclusive men-only clubs, it is also one of the most maligned by its detractors. Why, you may ask? It’s because the private men’s club membership attracts some of the most influential leaders, moneyed power brokers, and decision-makers in America with a global reach.

The Bohemian Club was founded in 1872 in San Francisco by a group of Chronicle journalists with a mission to forge bonds by blending business and the arts; literature, art, music and drama. Membership swelled to include businesses, industry, banking, building, and national media, providing an art colony of sorts for writers, artists, poets, actors and like-minded intellectuals who craved artistic culture and camaraderie in the post-gold rush frontier days.

The 19th century co-founders, Daniel O’Conner and Henry “Harry” Edwards, chose the term “Bohemian” that typified free-thinking avant-garde and art-focused intellectuals, and the word best described their objectives to promote a devotion to the Seven Arts.

The present membership roster is secret; however, past members were involved in the public domain, and reads like the Who’s Who in global politics, government, military, finance, utilities, industry, science, national media, and the arts.

Post launch-period Bohemians in non-chronological order: William Keith of the Barbizon School, was a member, as were poet George Sterling, Jack London, Samuel Clemons (aka Mark Twain), and Bret Harte. One of only four females to ever have been granted honorary membership in the male-only club was Jack London’s mentor, poetess Ina Coolbrith, the club’s librarian.

Other esteemed members include: Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Henry Ford, Henry Kissinger, Ike Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, George H. Bush, and every Republican president as well as many Democrat presidents. Academia is also well represented in the club by several university scientists, presidents and trustees. Political affiliation is not a membership prerequisite. Liberal Walter Cronkite was a member, as is Paul Pelosi.

Guest speakers at the elite club cover diverse subjects. Chris Matthews and Conan O’Brien were recent presenters, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown was a regular, and Peter Ueberroth and General Stanley McChrystal have been Lakeside guest lecturers. Other members include newspaper barons William R. Hearst I and III, Earl Warren, S.D. Bechtel and son Riley Bechtel, James Lockheed, Alan Sproul, Ralph Bailey of DuPont, David Packard, William Casey Jr., Colin Powell, the Rockefellers, Google’s Eric Schmidt and astronauts, and the late Robert Mondavi and Tony Snow, and many International Press Club members.

To retain their ‘Bohemian’ allegiance to the arts, about ten percent qualify for membership in the artistic and entertainment realm: Tennessee Ernie Ford, George Shearing, Clint Eastwood, Herman Wouk (The Caine Mutiny), Grateful Dead rockers Mickey Hart and Bob Weir, and Jimmy Buffett. Past guests included Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and many big bands, jazzmen, and concert pianists.

WEAVING SPIDERS COME NOT HERE

The San Francisco-based club on Taylor Street owns the Bohemian Grove, a 2,700-acre retreat nestled in the giant redwood forests 75 miles north of The City. The ‘Grovers’ convene annually to celebrate High-Jinx in June, the other a mid-summer two week “Encampment” fest where the elite 2000+ men camp in the woods in rustic bunkhouses.

As part of merriment in the woods, Bohemians enjoy gourmet dining, fine wines and gallons of booze in clearings under canopies of heritage redwoods. Untoward activities or ungentlemanly behavior at the safe sanctum is unacceptable. On occasion an offending member has been escorted to the gate.

The club prohibits the discussion of business dealings and the use the encampment as a forum to solicit clients or promote ventures, as dictated by their motto “Weaving spiders come not here.” It is impossible to monitor private conversations or any clandestine planning in the bunkhouses and dining rooms, but it is presumed the venue has spawned a slew of schemes and strategies down the global pike.

One such historic scheme that occurred in September 1942 in the Bohemian Grove is well documented: the Manhattan Project. Ernest O. Lawrence, Donald Cooksey and Robert Oppenheimer discussed the project at the Grove’s river clubhouse with scientists and the military top brass. This historic rendezvous is a source of great pride for the club, as the development of the atomic bomb was to end World War II in 1945.

One wonders what other plans affecting the outcomes of elections, world banking, and expansionism may have been hatched at the Grove since 1872 by men of power, men who control the money, and the men who virtually rule the world.

The remote wilderness-meeting place is innocuous, serene and pristine where great men gather in the backwoods to bond and forge friendships. The encampments in forest clearings are about 118 rustic camps and each having private clubhouses, dining rooms, decks, bars and sleeping quarters. Camp compounds are collectively owned, often patrilineal, who are responsible for annual dues, upkeep, steward-valets, and share in responsibility for the comfort, welfare and supplies of the residents and guests.

Members are invited to join and must adhere to strict rules: no tipping, cameras, cell phones, tape recorders, radios, pets or firearms. At no time are autographs to be requested. Each camp is considered private with an atmosphere of civility, and owner Bohemians invite other members to enter.

The hundred plus individual camps are identified by names: Mandalay regularly houses presidents; Hill Billies the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Hillside has the Military Generals; and Cave Man houses the Think Tank, banking and defense sect. These rustic bunkhouses are where some of the world’s wealthiest, most influential and powerful men enjoy fellowship in the forest. Directors and CEOs of many of the nation’s 800 corporations have Club representation.

To keep everyone happy, fed and watered, the club employs over 500 seasonal workers. Top chefs and crew run their own butcher shop, bakery, pantry and catering service, working night and day to prepare the best gourmet food and serve the finest of wines to as many as 1500 raucous revelers seated 26 to a table in the al fresco Dining Circle.

The Bohemian Grove retreat is a fun-filled event with “walkie-talkie” nature walks, lectures, live concerts and theatrical performances under the watchful eye of a 40-foot moss-covered owl totem shrine behind the lakeside stage. The seating encircles an open air auditorium-like theatre shaded by redwoods for lakeside lectures, plays and concerts.

The annual kick-off to encourage the Bohemian revelers to discard all outside cares is the ‘Cremation of Care’ ceremony whereby an effigy is set alight on a small barge in the lake like Beau Geste’s Viking funeral. This century-old ceremony, imbedded in tradition, has brought ire from detractors as being a human sacrifice ala ancient Druid practices in the forests of Anglesey.

SECURITY AND INFILTRATION

Each encampment season protesters demonstrate outside the compound Bohemian Avenue gates. The activists oppose everything that the Bohemian Club stands for, and as long as print media gives ink, and television gives airplay, the activists will continue to bombard the gates. The Monte Rio annual events attract the wrath of sundry activists: environmentalists, anti-war protesters, occupiers maligning the One Percent, feminists, and other causes du jour that inflame the agitators that relentlessly dog the club.

One of the most vocal groups is the redwood environmentalists who accuse the private club of cutting heritage ancient trees to harvest 500,000 board feet of lumber. The club maintains that the felled trees were not ancient redwoods, but trees under the timber management program. The Bohemian Grove management insists their private land tree-cutting programs follow federal guidelines and remains in harmony with nature.

The Bohemian Grove is fully contained during encampment events with doctors and staff in a medical centre and it maintains its own fire department.

As the Bohemian Grove property is off-limits to non-members and the public, the private men-only membership, has drawn condemnation from detractors. Maximum security at the grove is of utmost importance, as some of the world’s most high-profile leaders, military generals, captains of industry, oil companies, and CEOs attend the events. The high-value members and guests are collectively vulnerable to infiltration, sabotage and possible targets of terrorist danger.

Trespassers are apprehended, photographed, fingerprinted and added to their database. Members’ guests are screened, vetted and wear laminated identification tags at all times. Security is tight; guards travel on golf carts and are immediately alerted to security breaches. They do not take trespassing lightly and do not allow casual non-guests at any time. Tours are not permitted. Member’s families may visit at non-event periods and only during daylight hours.

Some reporters and activists have admitted to trespassing, and their stretched stories have caused getting a valid interview almost impossible. Any form of publicity about the Bohemian Club is shunned and denied.

The Internet is ablaze with the intrigue of conspiracy theories, “eyewitness” accounts of activities, illuminati-style mind-control, clear-cutting heritage redwoods, and accusing members of ritualistic atrocities, including Druid-like sacrifice and devil worship in the commune. Many are even outraged that some men are guilty of micturition—peeing in the forest!

It is understandable that the compound, where some of the world’s most influential power brokers gather each summer, has the nation’s best post 9/11 security, employing ex-CIA and FBI agents to guard the perimeters of the vast property, a monumental challenge to say the least.

Though the redwood forest property spans 2,700 acres, only 109 acres are cleared for Grove activities in buildings, bunkhouses, dining hall, and al fresco dining arenas. The rest of the forest that borders the Russian River is preserved for the glory of the grove.

The rest of the acreage is wild, where one imagines that shafts of light pierce the canopies, lichen and tree moss clump on bark, and deer and wildlife roam among sword ferns in the perennial wetness of dappled shade. Fog hangs on the redwoods’ crown giving watery life to the untrammeled forest floor where light filters like clerestory windows of a cathedral, and where the giant trees have survived for over three millennia, giving a misty Arthurian mystery to the wilderness.

During my investigations I could not locate a website or email address. Media packets seem to be unavailable, and activities are not advertised by the club. I have written the facts to the best of my ability and have reported fairly without sensationalizing. Most information is gleaned from old news reports and the Internet. Much information was extrapolated from a 160-page dissertation on socio-economics, purportedly sanctioned by the Bohemian Club, by a sociologist’s study on American clubdom, consensus building, and the bonding of elite men in society.

About 20,000 membership applicants will wait fifteen years or so to be vetted and hopefully accepted. If they meet the stringent requirements, they will become ‘Bohemians’ in one of the world’s most exclusive clubs. And with a heavy initiation fee of 25 grand and 600 smackers a month, they will have entered the rare stratosphere of America’s socio-economic elite, and be privileged to rub shoulders, and raise the cup, with the highest echelons of the nation’s most powerful band of brothers who make our world go around.