John Wehrheim struggled for years with what to do with the pictures.

His collection of photos are both deeply personal and emblematic of an era. They document a time and place on Kaua’i that some reviled, some adored and many knew only as a punchline to local jokes or a codeword for a 1970s phenomenon: Taylor Camp.

Wehrheim wanted to publish a book of his photos from Ha’ena’s infamous clothing-optional, alternative lifestyle, hippies-in-treehouses community.

But he didn’t want to do just another book of photography.

As an intermediate step, he ended up creating a 20-minute slide show of the photos set to period music and showing it at the Kilauea Theater as a one-night fundraiser for Kaua’i Community Radio.

“An hour before the screening every seat in the house was taken and there were 1,000 people outside wanting to get in,” Wehrheim said. “The ’slideshow’ was held over for a week. I knew then we had a film and decided that I would create a feature-length documentary.”

Wehrheim then set out to get video interviews of the players involved in the Taylor Camp saga, including politicians, community leaders and the camp residents themselves.

Tracking down the former Taylor Camp residents was actually easy, he said. They mostly kept in touch over the years. Many are leading what mainstream society would consider successful lives.

“They spread the word, threw big parties, everyone came and we interviewed them — sometimes for days,” he said. “They wanted their stories told.”

Some wanted to “wax nostalgic” and romanticize their hippie days, he says, and those interviews provide comic relief.

“But most were honest and forthcoming and talked about the drugs, the rip-offs, the welfare and food stamps and the children growing up wild. Yet almost without exception they all described it as ‘the best time of their lives.’ ”

Wehrheim is in a unique position to tell this story. He did not live at Taylor Camp, but stayed at a house nearby when he first moved to Kaua’i in 1971. His dossier is complex: He is a Notre Dame grad with an engineering degree, former Kaua’i Community College photography teacher, owner of Pacific Hydroelectric, developer, world traveler and husband of Kaua’i Councilmember and former mayor JoAnn Yukimura.

He was a recent college grad when he came to Kaua’i, where he got to know Howard Taylor, brother of movie star Elizabeth Taylor, who owned property in Ha’ena.

Howard Taylor got mad at the county when his plans for developing the land languished for years. Perhaps as an act of revenge, he bailed out a group of 13 young men and women who had been arrested for vagrancy and invited them to live on his property.

Those were the original residents of Taylor Camp.

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(Source:  Lee Cataluna, Honolulu Advertiser)

Taylor Camp (1969-1997)