Drop City Site, Colorado

Drop City was a community that formed in southern Colorado in 1965, which went on to become a sort of icon of the rural 1960s communal living that seemed to be blooming at that time. Singled out by the media as exemplary, Drop City was known for its dome-style of architecture, which combined the principles and methods of Buckminster Fuller with inexpensive, found materials, such as sheet metal hacked off of junked car roofs. In 1965, when the four original settlers of Drop City, art students and writers from the Universities of Kansas and Colorado, moved to this site, they had no intention of founding a large community, but just wanted to live cheaply and have time to pursue their interests. The community grew, however, spurred by media coverage that included news reports on national television. After becoming what one of the more notorious denizens called "a decompression-chamber for city freaks," and with the people that originally founded the community long since departed, Drop City was slowly vacated, until becoming largely a ghost town by 1973. A truck repair yard occupies some of the site today.