Hippie Homesteaders: Arts, Crafts, Music, and Living on the Land in West Virginia by Carter Taylor Seaton (review)

In the late 1960s and 1970s, droves of idealistic young counterculturists, disgusted with a country fighting an unjust and immoral war in Vietnam and inspired by a vision (sometimes fueled by psychedelics) of creating a whole new society, fled the cities into many of America’s rural precincts. Some of them formed the thousands of rural communes that flourished throughout the land; others were individual homesteaders who wanted to make their own way, even if they had to live in near-poverty. Some did not make it, and soon left, but many found ways of making a living and survived, sometimes even thriving.

Hippie Homesteaders presents a series of stories (well-illustrated with photographs old and new) based on interviews with the new generation of back-to-the-landers, most of who migrated to West Virginia from out of state. The stories spotlight the creativity of the artisans and craftspersons among the back-to-the-landers and their tenacity in eking out a living. The specialties of these artists pretty much span the range of American crafts; here, we hear the stories of a silkscreen printer, a spoon maker, a performer (in this case a mime), a weaver-dancer-activist, a potter-painter-jeweler, a dancer-mask-maker-teacher, a basket-making couple, and multiple candle makers, potters, quilters, sculptors, potters, musicians, furniture makers, and others. So many, author Seaton argues, that they had a significant positive economic impact on the state of West Virginia (250).

Why West Virginia? Two draws seemed to motivate the newcomers, the natural beauty of this state squarely situated in the Appalachians and cheap land, which the state had and still has in abundance (119). Although some of the newcomers could not survive economically and others returned to the cities they had left, many stayed and formed a community of the arts that has endured ever since. But maybe “has endured” is not quite right; Seaton repeatedly emphasizes the fact that the young immigrants continued traditions already deeply etched into the culture of the state. Handmade craftworks were nothing new in a place with a long tradition of self-reliance; the newcomers in many ways simply picked up on existing practices and perpetuated them, in many cases with the active help of the state’s longer-established residents. As Seaton puts it, the “hardscrabble pioneers who chose to tame the Appalachian Mountains turned to the plentiful natural resources they found to supply their everyday needs, and excellent craftsmanship was a hallmark of their work” (2).

The book subtly makes the claim that West Virginia was and is unusually fertile as a home of artisan crafts. Occasionally a forthright assertion to that effect surfaces, as when Seaton says that the artisans now form “the core of West Virginia’s reputation as a fountainhead of fine arts and handicrafts” (x). Although it would be difficult to read this book and not concede that the state did have many gifted artists, it is also difficult to believe that West Virginia was unique in its concentration of artists. When young idealists fled the cities looking to escape the fury of the conflict over the Vietnam war (as Seaton portrays many of the new settlers), they found many new homes, and sometimes they clustered with other like-minded souls. But my sense is that they created many of those clusters around the country. Vermont, to name just one example, also became a countercultural haven and the new Vermonters, with many artists and writers and musicians in their numbers, had a powerful impact on the culture and politics of the state. California had several creative clusters, as did Oregon, Massachusetts, and several other locales.

On a minor note, the book would have profited from closer copyediting and proofreading. Small errors appear more frequently than they should in a university press...