Making a commune in a desert, in the same state as Los Angeles, and having water problems? Like, no way!

Llano del Rio lasted from 1914 to 1918, and not only was there no steady water supply coming out of the mountains that the colony could depend on, the colonists ended up polluting the water they did have by manufacturing bar soap to sell to raise much needed cash. There were always problems at Llano del Rio. The colonists built adobe houses which melted in the winter rains. The colony was supposed to be self sufficient but the one crop the colonists could only successfully grow in abundance was carrots. Everybody was supposed to work and earn food and household goods that way, but there were always colonists who didn't do a lick of work yet still expected to get their fair share of everything everybody else worked for. At least they never had the drug problem that ended up wrecking so many communes back in the Hippy Era.

Wonderful writing there, Schirm!

Yep. Successful communities need many more things to survive than good intentions. And the smaller the commune, the fewer parasites it can support.

Man, amazing piece.

"...Look on my trash, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away

Like some kind on Okie Ozymandias.

of -- not some kind on
<mutter> Wish there was a preview or edit </mumble>

The Okies had nothing to do with Llano del Rio. Their time would come 18 years later, and they were looking for survival not utopia. Their legacy would be weed patch camps filled with battered old cars, patched, raggedy tents, and shacks made from leavings gleaned from local city dumps... Rural Hooverviles surviving long after the new Deal eased out the urban ones... Camps so ephemeral that even though some existed up to the Pearl Harbor attack, after they were abandoned their sites were completely forgotten. Though immortalized by Steinbeck, the camps were a fading memory of bad times, and they were left to the dust of the past. It was like they never existed.

There's a good reason why it's called a "Utopia" ('No such place')........ 7X=Q

Reminds me of that scene in Easy Rider where they stopped off at a commune of hippies trying to grow crops in dry sand. This was during the 60s, which goes to show ... something or other.