# Rajneeshpuram

Rajneeshpuram was a religious intentional community in the northwest United States, located in Wasco County, Oregon. Incorporated as a city between 1981 and 1988, its population consisted entirely of Rajneeshees, followers of the spiritual teacher Rajneesh, later known as Osho.
Its citizens and leaders were responsible for launching the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attacks, as well as the planned 1985 Rajneeshee assassination plot, in which they conspired to assassinate Charles Turner, the United States Attorney for the District of Oregon.

## Settlement

Tensions with the public and threatened punitive action by Indian authorities originally motivated the founders and leaders of the Rajneeshee movement, Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh and Ma Anand Sheela, to leave India and begin a new religious settlement in the United States. Discussions of this new settlement began as early as 1980, but Rajneesh did not agree to relocate until May 1981, when he travelled to the United States on a tourist visa, ostensibly for medical purposes. Rajneeshpuram was planned from the beginning as a home for Rajneesh's followers in the United States, most of whom were directed to sell all of their belongings before moving there. By registering the settlement as a town, Rajneesh could govern and control his followers without attracting attention from authorities.
Rajneeshpuram was on the site of a 64,281-acre (100 sq mi; 260 km$^2$) central Oregon property known as the Big Muddy Ranch, near Antelope, which was purchased by Sheela's husband, John Shelfer, in 1981 for $5.75 million, ($19.3 million in today's dollars). Within a year of arriving, the commune's leaders had become embroiled in a series of legal battles with their neighbors, primarily over land use. They had initially stated that they were planning to create a small agricultural community, their land being zoned for agricultural use, but it soon became apparent that they wanted to establish the kind of infrastructure and services normally associated with a town.
Within three years, the neo-sannyasins (Rajneesh's followers, also termed Rajneeshees in contemporaneous press reports) developed a community, turning the ranch from an empty rural property into a city of up to 7,000 people, complete with typical urban infrastructure such as a fire department, police, restaurants, malls, townhouses, a 4,200-foot (1,300 m) airstrip, a public transport system using buses, a sewage reclamation plant, a reservoir, and a post office with the ZIP code 97741. It is thought that the actual population during this time was potentially much higher than they claimed, and the neo-sannyasins may have gone as far as to hide beds and citizens during investigations. Various legal conflicts, primarily over land use, escalated to bitter hostility between the commune and local residents, and the commune was subject to sustained and coordinated pressures from various coalitions of Oregon residents over the length of its existence.

## Increasing tensions

The town of Antelope, Oregon, became a focal point of the conflict. It was the nearest town to the ranch, and had a population of under 60. Initially, Rajneesh's followers had purchased only a small number of lots in Antelope. After the activist group 1000 Friends of Oregon became involved, Antelope denied the sannyasins a business permit for their mail-order operation, and more sannyasins moved into the town. In April 1982, Antelope held a vote to disincorporate itself, to prevent itself being taken over. By this time, there were enough Rajneeshee residents to defeat the measure. In May 1982, the residents of the Rancho Rajneesh commune voted to incorporate the separate city of Rajneeshpuram on the ranch. Apart from the control of Antelope and the land-use question, there were other disputes. The commune leadership took an aggressive stance on many issues and initiated litigation against various groups and individuals.
The June 1983 bombing of Hotel Rajneesh, a Rajneeshee-owned hotel in Portland, by the Islamist militant group Jamaat ul-Fuqra further heightened tensions. The display of semi-automatic weapons acquired by the Rajneeshpuram Peace Force created an image of imminent violence. The Peace Force was heavily armed with Uzi Model B carbines, Galil rifles, Ruger Mini-14 carbines, M1A rifles, CAR-15 carbines, Ruger Model 44 carbines, and Smith & Wesson .357 revolvers. Rumors arose of the National Guard being called in to arrest Rajneesh. At the same time, the commune was embroiled in a range of legal disputes. Oregon Attorney General David B. Frohnmayer maintained that the city was essentially an arm of a religious organization, and that its incorporation thus violated the principle of separation of church and state. 1000 Friends of Oregon claimed that the city violated state land-use laws. In 1983, a lawsuit was filed by the State of Oregon to invalidate the city's incorporation, and many attempts to expand the city further were legally blocked, prompting followers to attempt to build in nearby Antelope, which was briefly named Rajneesh, when sufficient numbers of Rajneeshees registered to vote there and won a referendum on the subject.
The Rajneeshpuram residents believed that the wider Oregonian community was both bigoted and suffered from religious intolerance. According to Carl Latkin, Rajneesh's followers had made peaceful overtures to the local community when they first arrived in Oregon. As Rajneeshpuram grew in size, heightened tensions led certain fundamentalist Christian church leaders to denounce Rajneesh, the commune, and his followers. Petitions were circulated aimed at ridding the state of the perceived menace. Letters to state newspapers reviled the Rajneeshees, one of them likening Rajneeshpuram to another Sodom and Gomorrah, another referring to them as a "cancer in our midst." In time, circulars mixing "hunting humor" with dehumanizing characterizations of Rajneeshees began to appear at gun clubs, turkey shoots and other gatherings; one of these, circulated widely over the Northwest, declared "an open season on the central eastern Rajneesh, known locally as the Red Rats or Red Vermin."
As Rajneesh himself did not speak in public during this period, and until October 1984 gave few interviews, his secretary and chief spokesperson Ma Anand Sheela (Sheela Silverman) became, for practical purposes, the leader of the commune. She did little to defuse the conflict, employing a crude, caustic and defensive speaking style that exacerbated hostilities and attracted media attention. On September 14, 1985, Sheela and 15 to 20 other top officials abruptly left Rajneeshpuram. The following week, Rajneesh convened press conferences and publicly accused Sheela and her team of having committed crimes within and outside the commune. The subsequent criminal investigation, the largest in Oregon history, confirmed that a secretive group had, unbeknownst to both government officials and nearly all Rajneeshpuram residents, engaged in a variety of criminal activities, including the attempted murder of Rajneesh's physician, wiretapping and bugging within the commune and within Rajneesh's home, poisonings of two public officials, and arson.

## Role in 1984 bioterror attack

In 1984, Ma Anand Sheela and several Rajneeshpuram citizens planned, organized, and executed a bioterrorism attack, poisoning the salad bars of ten restaurants in Wasco County. The attack's purpose was to decrease voter turnout by sickening, terrorizing, and incapacitating voters so the Rajneeshpuram candidates would win the 1984 Wasco County elections. Although no one was killed, 751 people were sickened and 45 people were hospitalized, including several Wasco County public officials. The Rajneesh bioterrorism attack is the largest biological warfare attack in United States history.
Ironically, the attack backfired by increasing voter turnout. Hundreds of local residents, suspecting Rajneeshee involvement in the attack, went to the polls on election day and voted overwhelmingly against the Rajneeshee candidates.

## Air Rajneesh and Big Muddy Ranch Airport

In the mid-1980s members of the Rajneeshee commune constructed Big Muddy Ranch Airport to ferry supplies and passengers to Rajneeshpuram. To ferry the actual cargo and passengers the Rajneeshees created an airline called Air Rajneesh which operated large commuter aircraft out of Big Muddy Ranch Airport.

## Outcome

Sheela was extradited from West Germany, tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison for attempted murder, assault, wiretapping, arson, immigration fraud, and her role in the bioterror attack. During the next few years, the movement was investigated for several other felonies:
* Arson: On January 14, 1985, the Wasco County Planning Department office was set on fire. The fire extensively damaged the office and destroyed one-third to one-half of the county's files. Arson investigators suspected the Planning Department was targeted in an attempt to intimidate Wasco County employees, and to destroy the records of disputes involving the Rajneeshees.
* Attempted Murder: Commune members planned the assassinations of Oregon State Attorney Charles H. Turner, Oregon Attorney General David Frohnmayer, and compiled a "hit list" of persons considered to be Rajneeshee enemies
* Immigration Fraud: Rajneesh claimed he had travelled to the United States for medical reasons, but never sought medical treatment during his residence. Rajneesh subsequently pled guilty to immigration fraud.
* Voter Fraud: The Rajneeshpuram community attempted to sway local elections in their favor with their "Share-a-Home" program. The Rajneeshees bused thousands of homeless people to Rajneeshpuram, and registered them to vote to inflate the constituency of voters for the group's candidates. The Wasco county clerk countered the attempt by enforcing a regulation requiring all new voters to submit their qualifications when registering to vote. A federal judge upheld the clerk's decision.
* Currency and Drug Smuggling
The Office of the Attorney General alleged the criminal activity began in the spring of 1984, three years after the establishment of the commune. Rajneesh himself was accused of immigration violations, to which he entered an Alford plea. As part of his plea bargain, Rajneesh agreed to leave the United States, returned to Pune, India, and the commune disbanded after his followers left Oregon.
Rajneeshpuram's legal status remained ambiguous. In the church/state suit, Federal Judge Helen J. Frye ruled against Rajneeshpuram in late 1985. Judge Frye's decision was issued too late to be of practical significance, and was not contested. However, the Oregon courts subsequently ruled in favor of the city; the Court of Appeals ruled in 1986 the incorporation had not violated the state planning system's agricultural land goals. The Oregon Supreme Court closed its litigation in 1987, leaving Rajneeshpuram vacant, bankrupt, but legal within Oregon law.
In 1985, the ranch was listed for sale at over $28M, but was ultimately sold in 1988 at a sheriff's auction for $4.5M to Connecticut General Life Insurance Company, the sole bidder.

## Washington Family Ranch

Dennis R. Washington's firm Washington Construction purchased The Big Muddy Ranch for $3.6 million in 1991. Washington attempted to run the ranch for profit, and also unsuccessfully negotiated with the state to turn it into a state park.
In 1996, Washington donated the ranch to Young Life, a Christian youth organization. Since 1999, Young Life has operated a summer camp there, first as the WildHorse Canyon Camp, later as the Washington Family Ranch.
There are two camps on the property today. The primary camp, Washington Family Ranch: Canyon serves high school students, while the smaller camp, Washington Family Ranch: Creekside, primarily serves middle school students.
The Big Muddy Ranch Airport is also located there.