10) “Settlement and employment patterns”: Settlement patterns are relatively easy to document; like members of other distinct ethnic groups, hippies have tended to cluster. Hippyland (the website) lists countercultural enclaves in 39 American states and various parts of the world (“Hippy Havens”). I’d be willing to bet, by the way, that there are such enclaves, perhaps less prominent, in all 50 states.

I once heard a woman on a talk show disparagingly refer to California as “the flower-child state,” and California alone has dozens of areas where hippies have settled: in Chapter Two, we noted Marin County’s countercultural image; San Francisco, of course, has since the mid-sixties had a prominent hippie community, and as the famous Scott McKenzie song says, “If you‘re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.“ Los Angeles’ Laurel Canyon (as in Joni Mitchell’s “Ladies of the Canyon”) has a rich hippie history. Big Sur was mentioned above. Humboldt County has been renown over the years for its many countercultural marijuana growers and resulting government raids.

Of course, earlier we discussed how Vermont is now seen as a countercultural state. Often hippie enclaves—sometimes known as “hippie ghettoes” (Partridge)—spring up around university towns; so, no matter how "conservative” the state, it has colleges, and that often means hippie communities. Recently, someone told me a story about “all these little hippie houses” out at some small, relatively isolated town in rural Kansas where she used to live—the town had a college campus. And in many states—Iowa, Wisconsin, and Texas, for examples—the largest hippie communities are located in important university towns: Iowa City, Madison, and Austin, respectively.

And, as mentioned, there are hippie enclaves across the globe. Here’s a fun example: In 1987, the New York Times carried “Off Canada, The Hippies are Evolving,” telling of the Queen Charlotte Islands, south of Alaska and west of British Columbia:

. . . once regarded . . . as a Bolshevik rabble, most of the hippies have become near yuppies. Not all the way to BMW’s, to be sure, but far enough to be seen as solid citizens . . . . an area of the village of Queen Charlotte known as Hippie Hill, once a cluster of lean-tos and cabins separated by vegetable plots, is a suburban community of $50,000 [then a respectable price] houses. (Burns)

If there are underlying patterns to hippie settlement, three factors seem to predominate: a relatively tolerant atmosphere (such as in college towns or in traditionally open San Francisco), being close to nature, and being with and around other hippies.

Clearly, there are hippie settlement patterns; we’ll give the counterculture another full point here.