La Honda has had a wild and crazy past

Ken Kesey was born in Colorado in 1935, and then his family moved to Oregon. Ken attended the University of Oregon at Eugene. He wanted to become an actor, and spent summers unsuccessfully trying to get a break in Hollywood. As a graduate student, Ken got a scholarship to attend Stanford. He took a creative writing class at Stanford that put him in touch with many of the literary figures of the day. He and his wife lived in Palo Alto, and Ken began to write. In 1960, Kesey volunteered to become a subject for drug studies at the Veterans Administration Hospital at Menlo Park. Ken was paid to take the experimental and then legal drug, LSD, among others. He also began working as an aide in the mental ward at the hospital.

It was here that he gained experiences that he used in writing "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." When this book was published in 1962, it brought Kesey instant fame and some fortune. He could afford to buy a log house in remote La Honda. This became a center where Kesey and his friends could continue pharmaceutical experimentation without the involvement of the Veterans Administration. In between parties, Kesey managed to complete a second book.

To celebrate the publication of this book in New York in 1964, Ken and his friends decided to go on a cross-country tour. They purchased an old school bus and painted it in the psychedelic day-glo fashion of the time. With LSD-laced orange juice and Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac among the Merry Pranksters, they traveled across the county and back. The trip resulted in Kerouac's book, "On the Road," and much of the folklore of the Hippie Era. Kesey himself was arrested for marijuana possession a few times. He faked his suicide and hid out in Mexico for a while. Tired of living in exile, he returned. When released from the San Mateo County Jail in 1967, the terms of his probation prohibited him from returning to La Honda.

He moved to Oregon, and lived relatively quietly. The Keseys sold the La Honda house in 1997. It had an asking price if $239,000. Ken Kesey died in November 2001.

It is good to note, however, that the federal government has not forgotten this small hamlet. Just last year the Department of Homeland Security gave a $247,000 grant to the La Honda Volunteer Fire Brigade for a new fire truck.

La Honda returned to normal after the Kesey days. Today it is surrounded by state parks, and many of the modest summer cabins have been replaced with impressive year-round homes. A minimum number of commercial establishments, but the requisite saloon or two keep life simple. Quiet country life still exists in La Honda.

Rediscovering the Peninsula appears in the Monday edition of the Daily Journal. For more information on this or related topics, visit the San Mateo County History Museum, 777 Hamilton St., Redwood City.