Every July, somewhere between 1,500 and 2,500 of the most powerful men in the United States drive up Highway 116 in Sonoma County, pass through a guarded gate in Monte Rio, and disappear into 2,700 acres of old-growth redwood forest for two and a half weeks. No press. No women. No outside communications beyond what they bring in themselves. They eat together, drink heavily, watch theatrical productions, listen to off-the-record speeches from sitting government officials, urinate openly on the trees, and perform a torch-lit ceremony in front of a 40-foot concrete owl at midnight. Then they drive back out and run the country again. This has been happening, without significant interruption, since 1878. And California, somehow, has never fully reckoned with the fact that it's been going on in its backyard the entire time.
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How It Started: Journalists, Artists, and the Slow Takeover by Power
The Bohemian Club was founded in San Francisco in 1872 by a group of journalists, writers, musicians, and artists who wanted a place to drink, talk, and be creative without the intrusion of the merchant class. The name "Bohemian" was meant literally — these were people who lived outside conventional society, by the standards of Gilded Age San Francisco. The club's original motto, borrowed from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, was "Weaving Spiders Come Not Here" — meaning business deals were not welcome at the table.
Within a decade, the merchants and businessmen the founding members had specifically wanted to exclude had become the dominant force in the club. The artists stayed — the bylaws require that at least 10% of membership come from the arts — but the center of gravity shifted decisively toward power. By the early 20th century, the Bohemian Club's membership reads like a catalogue of American elite: presidents, cabinet secretaries, generals, Supreme Court justices, Fortune 500 executives, media moguls. The annual summer encampment at the Grove became the social event of the year for a certain class of American man.
The first encampment was held in 1878, when a founding member named Henry "Harry" Edwards announced he was leaving San Francisco for New York to pursue his acting career. Fewer than 100 members gathered in a Marin County redwood grove to send him off. They liked it so much they kept doing it. By 1893 they had found their permanent site in Sonoma County. By 1899 they owned it outright, after purchasing the land from a logging operation for a price that would be a bargain a thousand times over by any modern measure.
What Actually Happens There: The Documented Record
We know more about Bohemian Grove than most people realize, because over the decades a surprising number of journalists, activists, and conspiracy theorists have managed to get inside — and because the Nixon White House tapes, now in the National Archives, are extremely candid about what goes on there.
The centerpiece of the encampment is the Cremation of Care, held on the first Saturday evening of the gathering. Members in red robes process by torchlight through the redwoods to the shore of a small artificial lake. There, before the 40-foot concrete owl — built in 1929, designed by sculptor and two-time club president Haig Patigian — a theatrical ceremony unfolds in which an effigy representing "Care" — symbolizing worldly worry and burden — is ritually burned. The voice of the Owl, speaking from speakers embedded in its hollow body, was for many years a recording of Walter Cronkite. The ceremony uses pyrotechnics, orchestral music, and elaborate costuming. It was devised in 1881 by club co-founder James F. Bowman as a way to kick off the encampment by symbolically freeing members from the weight of their responsibilities.
Beyond the Cremation of Care, the encampment features what members call "Lakeside Talks" — off-the-record speeches delivered at an outdoor stage beside the lake by senior government officials, academics, military leaders, and business executives. Henry Kissinger has spoken there. George Shultz. Caspar Weinberger. Dick Cheney. These talks are entirely closed to press and public. No transcript is published. No recording is permitted. According to a memo from Edwin Harper — one of Reagan's assistants — to Alan Greenspan, Reagan's 1983 cuts to Social Security were first discussed and planned at a Bohemian Club meeting two years earlier in 1981. A Reagan advisor reportedly agreed to cut capital gains taxes after being persuaded by venture capitalist Bill Draper while the two of them sat, as one account puts it, "semi-naked at the grove."
The Grove is also organized into over 100 individual "camps" — essentially social fraternities within the larger encampment, each with its own cabins, staff, and social culture. The camp names give you some sense of the vibe: Hill Billies, Mandalay, Silverado Squatters, Poison Oak, Abbey, Better 'Ole, Camels. Members stay in the same camp year after year, building relationships over decades. Hill Billies, historically, has been considered the most exclusive camp, with a membership list that has included multiple U.S. presidents.