A little context first as to why this bird’s eye view of an old plane is so interesting:

• A cult commune of 7,000 build an amazing infrastructure in rural Oregon on part of a 64,000 acre parcel of land
• A fleet of 90 Rolls Royces and several jets
• Attempt to take over neighboring city Antelope, OR
• Bussing in hundreds of homeless people to help sway an election
• Poisoning 750 people in a neighboring city
• Assassination plots
• Uzis
• The leader attempting to flee the country (maybe even in this very plane)

The plane you see here was that of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh - the head of the cult described above. It was purchased by Ed Guidicelli of Sheffield, Ohio who wants to turn it into a Bed & Breakfast and as a result is facing some zoning problems with the city. [Boing Boing & AP articles]

Jason, one of the two people who run Bird’s Eye Tourist, spent some time at the ranch in 2000 - a year after it was purchased by Young Life. He saw firsthand the expanse of what had been built and how Young Life transformed the existing infrastructure and numerous buildings into something much more postive.

Youtube movie about the rise and fall of the cult - 8min.

Via Boing Boing and courtesy of Steve Lombardi.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 15th, 2007 at 6:33 pm and is filed under Aircraft, United States, Ohio, Our Favorites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.