Intentional communities -- utopian, reform, single tax, temperance, religious, free love communities and settlements in Canada, the U.S.

Tom Monto
Jan 23
35 min read

Updated: Apr 26

This blog gives information on Intentional settlements in Canada and elsewhere, and also on "Co-operatives -- consumer and worker".

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CANADA

Wikipedia articles list these intentional communities in Canada today:

(all have been duplicated below under the respective province listing)

Community Farm of the Brethren, Ontario
Hutterite Christian Communities, existing in Australia, Canada, and the United States, but founded in Frenchman Butte, Saskatchewan
New Oasis for Life Commune (new home in BC, at Escott Bay Resort, situated by Anahim Lake.) "In April, 2009, Lifechanyuan created an intentional community – the Second Home – in China, which is now called the New Oasis for Life....In November 2016, we were forced to disband because of the pressure from government; in September 2017, the community was rebuilt in Canada."
Orthodox Mennonites, existing throughout Canada and the United States but founded in Ontario
Treehouse Village Ecohousing, Bridgewater, Nova Scotia
Whole Village, Alton, Ontario
Yarrow Ecovillage, Chilliwack, BC (see Wiki "Yarrow Ecovillage")

(from Wiki: "Intentional communities")

===============

Utopian colonies in Canada in history

(or if not utopian, then at least intentional settlements)

in order of province:

Ontario, BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Atlantic provinces

ONTARIO

Brights Grove, Ontario 1829-[short-lived]

(a neighbourhood of Sarnia, Lambton County, Ontario, Canada.

Brights Grove is located on the shore of Lake Huron.)

Brights Grove was the site of Canada's first commune.[2] In 1829, Brights Grove was established along the model of Robert Owen's New Lanark, Scotland project by Henry Jones (1776–1852). The colony was named 'Maxwell' and was a short-lived project. However, it has been argued by Canadian socialist historian Ian McKay that "[t]he builders of the short-lived colony named Maxwell that Jones planted near Sarnia may well have been the first people in North America to call themselves 'socialists'."

The Children of Peace [Ontario] (1812–1889)

The Children of Peace (1812–1889) was an Upper Canadian Quaker sect under the leadership of David Willson, known also as 'Davidites', who separated during the War of 1812 from the Yonge Street Monthly Meeting in what is now Newmarket, Ontario, and moved to the Willsons' farm. Their last service was held in the Sharon Temple in 1889.

Between 1825 and 1832, a series of buildings was constructed on the farm, the most notable of which is the Sharon Temple, an architectural symbol of their vision of a society based on the values of peace, equality and social justice, which is now part of an open-air museum that was in 1990 designated as National Historic Site of Canada.

They were a "plain folk", former Quakers with no musical tradition, who went on to create the first silver band in Canada and build the first organ in Ontario.[1] They built an ornate temple to raise money for the poor, and built the province's first shelter for the homeless.[2] By 1851, Sharon Temple was the most prosperous agricultural settlement in the province. They took a lead role in the organization of the province's first co-operative, the Farmers' Storehouse, and opened the province's first credit union.[3] Through their support of William Lyon Mackenzie, and by ensuring the elections of both "fathers of responsible government", Robert Baldwin and Louis LaFontaine, they played a critical role in the development of democracy in Canada

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Bellamy Village ON – proposed in 1891

proposed by disciple of Edward Bellamy’s socialist principles

(see Canadian Utopias project online)

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Dandelion was a rural intentional community near Enterprise, Ontario.

active in the 1970s, disbanded around 1990. (see Wikipedia)

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Community Farm of the Brethren, Ontario

(Wiki article, still active in 2020s)

Whole Village, Alton, Ontario

(Wiki article, still active in 2020s)

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BRITISH COLUMBIA

Holberg, BC 1907-1914?

said to be named after

Ludvig Holberg, Baron of Holberg (3 December 1684 – 28 January 1754)

-- a writer, essayist, philosopher, historian and playwright born in Bergen, Norway. later moved to Denmark

Author of one novel -- Niels Klim's Underground Travels, originally published in Latin as Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum (1741),

Niels Klim's Underground Travels,-- a satirical science-fiction/fantasy novel.

It describes a utopian society from an outsider's point of view.

often pokes fun at morality, science, sexual equality, religion, governments, philosophy and other cultural and social topics

it is both Utopian and Hollow Earth - it is said to be the "first science fiction novels to use the Hollow Earth concept"

"The book is significant in the history of science fiction, being one of the first science-fiction novels in history along with Lucian's (125–180 AD) A True Story, Johannes Kepler's Somnium (The Dream, 1634), Cyrano de Bergerac's Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (1656), Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), and Voltaire's Micromégas (1752). Along with a number of those stories, an excerpt was included in the anthology The Road to Science Fiction, Volume 1: From Gilgamesh to Wells."

(from Wiki "Niels Klim's Underground Travels")

"There is a town named after Holberg on northern Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. It was founded by Danish immigrants in 1907"

perhaps it was founded in 1909, not 1907

perhaps it was formerly known as West Arm.

(search in Peel's PP website found no mention of Holberg, BC in prairie newspapers from 1907 to 1914)

[a medievalists' examination of old utopian visions can be found at:

https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2019/05/whose-utopia-is-it-anyway-some-brief.html)

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Poole's Land, Tofino on Vancouver Island

an eco-village and a countercultural intentional community

existed between 1988 and 2020.

Operated by founder Michael Poole

The community functioned as a popular tourist destination as well as a place of low-cost residence and accommodation, particularly for seasonal workers working over the summer months. Residents were encouraged to participate in a hippie lifestyle, living in camp-like conditions with an emphasis on sustainability and a community culture that espoused empathy as a core value and that was highly tolerant of soft drug use.

Poole's Land came to an end due to a combination of dissatisfaction by local authorities, the failing health and death of founder Michael Poole, and the COVID-19 pandemic paralysing operations.

Poole died on June 16, 2020.

Residents of Poole's Land lived in camp-like settings, occupying tents, wooden cabins, treehouses, or tiny homes,[10] many placed on the back of trailers in order to abide by local Tofino housing bylaws.[11]...

There was no on-site plumbing, with the community making use of outhouses and composting toilets for bathroom facilities and using the nearby Pacific Ocean to wash...

(see wiki "Poole's land")

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Ruskin, BC 1895-1898, 1898-1913(ish)

Ruskin is a rural, naturally-treed community, about 55 km east of Vancouver on the north shore of the Fraser River. It was named around 1900 after the English art critic, essayist, and social thinker John Ruskin.

Ruskin is one of the historical communities of the municipality of Maple Ridge.

Ruskin Mills: The Canadian Co-operative Society 1895-1898

Members of the Canadian Co-operative Society, formed in Mission, BC, in 1895, gave the name Ruskin Mills to a sawmill and to the settlement they established at the mouth of the Stave River in present-day Ruskin.

Although nothing in the constitution and bylaws of the Society alludes to the formation of an utopian Ruskin socialist colony, some leading members sympathized with and discussed Ruskin's social ideas.

The Canadian Co-operative Society was a success at first. In 1897 the co-operative counted 54 members, most living close to the mill. There they had built homes, barns and a boarding house. Aside from the sawmill and logging operation, the members set up a general store, a smithy (blacksmith), a shoemaker's shop, a dairy and a vegetable farm.

Not less than thirty students—mostly the members' children—attended the school in Ruskin in the spring of 1897.

The year 1898 was the last year of the co-operative in Ruskin. Using a traditional method, logs had been pulled by horses or oxen to Stave River and then floated down to the mill, in 1898 due to a rainless summer, the Stave River dried up and logs could not be moved to the mill.

Lacking money and facing potential bankruptcy, the Society surrendered its assets to E.H. Heaps & Co. who had supplied the machinery for the mill on credit.

Most members moved away. Only a few members stayed and worked at the mill for a year or so.

Heaps & Co.

Heaps & Co. turned the small Ruskin mill into a progressive operation. They expanded and upgradedthe mill, and steam and railway logging replaced the previous methods, horse or oxen transport. Heaps built a logging rail line that grew northwest until it reached Dewdney Trunk Road and then was built a short distance along the east side of Kanaka Creek.

Across the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) rail track, on the shore of the Fraser River, was the Heaps office building, the nerve centre of the operation. As well it accommodated the general store and post office, and living quarters for senior staff and their families.[5]

The Heaps mill at Ruskin burned down in the winter of 1904/1905 and was rebuilt, only to burn down again in 1910.

Plans to rebuild the mill failed when the company could not raise further funds. There were plans and promises for a new and even larger mill, but the building boom in Vancouver crashed in 1913. Heaps's Ruskin logging and lumber operation went into receivership.

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Sointula, Malcolm Island, BC Finnish 1901-1905

The name Sointula means "Place of Harmony" (literally 'the place of chord') in the Finnish language. A group of Finnish settlers founded the village in 1901 after rowing north from Nanaimo. They planned to set up a utopian socialist society known as the Kalevan Kansa, based on cooperative principles.[2] and wrote to visionary Matti Kurikka in Finland to lead the new community. They were looking for a way out of the mines operated by the Dunsmuir family on Vancouver Island.

It was a physically hard life, and a devastating fire in the Sointula community hall in 1903 killed three adults and eight children[3] almost bringing the fledgling community to its knees. Kalervo Oberg, a Finnish-Canadian anthropologist born in 1901, came with his family to Sointula in 1902, and they were caught in the fire of 1903. Two of his sisters died in the fire.

Financial difficulties continued to plague the group. They worked for two years on the unprofitable Capilano Bridge project, and after that the Kalevan Kansa was disbanded as a utopian colony in 1905.[5][6]

But many of the community members remained on the island. Their descendants live there now.

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Harmony Island -- Sointula (Kalevan Kansan Colonization Association)

"the imperfect realization of utopianism in the radical Finnish social experiment at Sointula (Harmony) on Malcolm Island" as described by George Woodcock in BC A Centennial History, p. 206-213

founders of Sointula invited Mati Kurikka to come from Australia, he had founded a utopian colony in Queensland

Kurrika held unusual views of marriage and free love

bad fire in 1903,

Kurikka left in 1903

disastrous bridge-building contract put them farther in hole

Kurikka accused of mismanagement of colony's funds

left-wing of society were dissident to Kurikka's leadership

(from Rasporich, "Utopian Ideals and Community Settlements in Western Canada 1880-1914")

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fruitlands of BC encouraged pastoral experiments

Wallachin between kamloops and Lytton in 1910 (Rasporich, "Utopian Ideals...", p. 362)

BC temperance

Bella Coolla Norwegians

Quatsino Narrows Norwegians (Rasporich, "Utopian Ideals...", p. 367)

New Oasis for Life Commune (new home in BC, at Escott Bay Resort, situated by Anahim Lake.) "In April, 2009, Lifechanyuan created an intentional community – the Second Home – in China, which is now called the New Oasis for Life....In November 2016, we were forced to disband because of the pressure from government; in September 2017, the community was rebuilt in Canada."

Wiki article, still active in 2020s

Yarrow Ecovillage, Chilliwack, BC (see Wiki "Yarrow Ecovillage")

Wiki article, still active in 2020s

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Alberta

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Religious settlements in Alberta

Mormon settlements in southern Alberta

Dreamers at Medicine Hat in 1907-08 (Rasporich, "Utopian Ideals...", p. 370)

But religious groups were mostly kept out of Canada by immigration officials.

(see Howard Palmer, "Responses to Foreign Immigration, Nativism and Ethnic Toleration 1880-1920" UofA thesis (1971).

see C.A. Dawson Group Settlement - Ethnic Communities in Western Canada (1936)

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Parry Sound colonists

a colony at Ft. Saskatchewan

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Barr Colony (Lloydminster) temperance colony 1902

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French settlement at Whitewood, near Moose Mountain, Assiniboia in 1885

St. Ann Ranch Trading Company and Jeanne d'Arc Ranch

A resident of Whitewood moved on to establish a French ranching company at Trochu, Alberta. He was Comte Paul de Beaudrap

(Rasporich, "Utopian Ideals...", p. 363)

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Sylvan Lake, 1906-1908

democratic socialist experiment attempted at Sylvan Lake, 1906.

led by Dr. Tanche

see Canadian Utopias project online

see also:

(Rasporich, "Utopian Ideals...", p. 265)

Coates, Colin M. 2012. Une utopie française en Alberta: le phalanstère du docteur Adalbert Tanche à Sylvan Lake, 1906-1908. Paper presented at colloque “Les immigrants français au Canada à l’époque de la Grande Migration transatlantique (1870-1914).” Éditions du CRINI. Num 3, avril. Accessed 15.05.16. http://www.crini.univ-nantes.fr/35354114/0/fiche___pagelibre/&RH=1332493528973

Father Voisin. 1916. The History of Sylvan Lake Mission 1900-1916. Handwritten account of the Catholic Church at Sylvan Lake. Sylvan Lake and District Archives.

John Tanche fonds. 1972. Reminiscences of the Tanches and other families at Sylvan Lake, by Jean René Henri (John) Tanche. 1972. Glenbow Archives. Reference M1209, NA2531.

Tanche, Jean René Henri (John). 1982. Letter to Mr Dawe, Archivist, Red Deer & District Archives. Red Deer & District Archives.

Tanche, John. 1981. "The French socialist colony." In The Districts’ diary – 95 years of history of the Crossroads, Poplar Ridge, Norma and Durham Districts, 430-434. Red Deer AB: Poplar Ridge Historical Committee.

(excerpted from Canadian Utopias project online)

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Sturgeon River School of Living, near Onoway

"a (hippie) commune near Onoway, Alberta in the 1970s"

from description of the book Across the Sturgeon by Christine Francis Anacker

(Published by Sturgeon River Publications, Onoway, 2020)

a former Onoway resident recalls going to school with kids from the group but no info on how many families

Todd Butler was young man in the community.

Eventually, they dropped out and joined four other families to form a commune on 35 hectares near Onoway. He grew up at what was called the Sturgeon River School of Living. "Quite a change from suburban Edmonton, let me tell you," he said.

"I was a hippie brat. Everybody was naked and topless and gardening. You don't want to see too much naked gardening."

Otherwise, life on the Alberta commune was idyllic for the boy, who even at a young age could appreciate the tensions between the Sturgeon River communitarians and the local rednecks.

A carload of young drunks drove out to the commune one day with mayhem on their mind, only to see one of the members, a man bigger than Jerry Garcia and twice as hairy, wrestling with a Volkswagen engine on a pulley. All wound up drinking beer and talking horsepower.

The boy's first 45 was The Monkees' Daydream Believer (even all these years later he correctly remembers the B-side as Goin' Down), while his first album was the Beatles' Rubber Soul.

Such impeccable credentials helped when his father bought him an acoustic guitar at the age of 12. The boy soon formed a band with a brother and three friends.

They called themselves Catalyst, or, sometimes, Cattle List.

followed by the band One Way as in "One Way from Onoway."

...

He was born in Edmonton, the second of four children of a Mormon couple. His father was an English professor at the University of Alberta. The boy first performed by singing in choirs at church. Then the sixties happened. His parents listened to the Beatles, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, losing their religion as they became immersed in the counterculture.

Todd later had career as comedian, but got back into music producing well respected records.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/taking-lyrical-liberties-all-part-of-being-a-canadian-loonie/article18240457/

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SASKATCHEWAN

Doukhobor settlements in eastern Saskatchewan, at Swan River (see "Tolstoyan colonies" below)

(see Wiki Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood, Canadian Community Doukhobors (1900-1938)

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Qu'Appelle Valley, SK:

Scottish crofter colony at Benbecula

East London's Colony at Moosomin

ethnic colonies such as Esterhazy, New Sweden and Thingvalla.

New Finland and Thingvalla (Icelandic) were temperance and co-operative settlements.

aristocratic society at Canningon Manor, south of Moosomin

"Harmony Industrial Association" (Hamona) 1895/1898 - 1900

democratic social experiment at Harmony, near Tantallon,

closed up in 1900 after only two years of full operation

===

Temperance colonies in Sask

Temperance colony at Saskatoon 1883- (Rasporich, "Utopian Ideals...", p. 365-

see Bruce Peel Saskatoon Story)

Barr Colony (Lloydminster)

(and likely many more, including those mentioned in Qu'Appelle valley above

Hutterite Christian Communities, existing in Australia, Canada, and the United States, but founded in Frenchman Butte, Saskatchewan

Wiki article, still active in 2020s

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Manitoba

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QUEBEC

La Kanado QC –

rural farming collective for unemployed

(see Canadian Utopias project online)

Gardenvale QC – 1918,

inspired by:

Ebenezer Howard’s town plans,

FG Todd’s landscapes,

Antigonish Movement study clubs

(see Canadian Utopias project online)

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Atlantic Provinces

Colony of Avalon NL – 1621,

George Calvert attempted to create a permanent fishing settlement that offered individuals freedom of religious choice

(see Canadian Utopias project online)

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Pennfield NB (a.k.a. Beaver Harbour) – 1783

settled by U.S. Quakers, who signed pledge not to buy, sell, or keep slaves

(see Canadian Utopias project online)

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St. Ann’s NS – 1819

settlement headed by Norman McLeod to promote rigorous approach to Presbyterianism

(see Canadian Utopias project online)

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Grand Falls NL – 1905

“garden city” as mill town realized to produce newsprint for London press baron, Alfred Harmsworth

(see Canadian Utopias project online)

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Compton Community of Belle River & Bangor PE – 1909

millenarian communal kin group

(see Canadian Utopias project online)

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B. Compton Limited 1900-ish - 1947

In the first decade of the 20th Century, a few closely-related families established a utopian community in Canada’s smallest province. Known officially as B. Compton Limited but described by a journalist in 1935 as "Prince Edward Island’s unique ‘brotherly love’ community," this utopia owed its longevity to the cohesion provided by its communal organization, dense kin ties, and long-held millenarianism – and to a decidedly pragmatic approach to business.

All Things in Common demonstrates how "un-utopian" such a community could be while problematizing the contention that the inevitable end of all utopian experiments is a full-blown dystopia. Beginning with a compelling backstory and locating the Compton community in the historiography of North American utopias, the author explores the community’s business endeavours, its religious, familial and transgressive aspects, and its brief period of international fame, before assessing the factors that led to its dissolution in 1947....

(from book promo for

Ruth Brouwer, All Things in Common: A Canadian Family and Its Island Utopia)

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Port Union NL – 1916,

only North American utopian town built by a workers’ union

(see Canadian Utopias project online)

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Markland NL – 1934

first of eight settlements incorporating communal farming, social and health programs, and Norwegian-style “folk” school

(see Canadian Utopias project online)

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Tompkinsville NS – 1937

cooperative housing built 1937 in coal-mining town inspired by Antigonish Movement, Mary Arnold, local families’ study club

(see Canadian Utopias project online)

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Treehouse Village Ecohousing, Bridgewater, Nova Scotia

(Wiki article, still active in 2020s)

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General notes:

Canadian intentional communities in general

There is no one Wiki article on this, but these Wiki articles touch on separate Canadian utopian colonies back in history:

Rasporich has essay in the Prairie West Historic Readings edited by R. Douglas Francis and Howard Palmer on "Utopian Ideals and Community Settlements in Western Canada 1880-1914", reprinted from Settlement in Western Canada edited by Howard Palmer

"... group settlement ideology combined with a moral projection of a new order was a continuing theme in western Canada"

Robert Stead's novel Dennison Grant featured a carefully-planned co-operative agricultural venture (joint-stock business) that substituted group settlement in villages for the rectangular survey.

A joint -stock corporation is not same as co-op. For one thing in joint-stock corporation a person has as many votes as stocks they own, while in a co-op run according to Rochdale principles, "one person, one vote" rule prevails.

E.A. Partridge's War on Poverty mentioned "co-operative commonwealth" which he portrayed as a militaristic social commonwealth. (p. 373)

Partridge's idea was described by Carl Berger in Visions 2020 (1970) (editor Stephen Carlson)

see also W.A. Mackintosh's Agricultural Co-operation in Western Canada (1924), p. 18-21.

The term "co-operative commonwealth" was publicized in Laurence Gronlund's 1884 book Co-operative Commonwealth, An Exposition of Socialism.

======

Outline look at Canadian utopian settlements in history

as described or at least mentioned in Rasporich, "Utopian Ideals and Community Settlements in Western Canada 1880-1914"

Tolstoyan communities

They attempt to live an ascetic and simple life, preferring to be vegetarian, non-smoking, teetotal and chaste. Tolstoyans are considered Christian pacifists and advocate nonresistance in all circumstances.

Doukhobor colonies in Canada especially on the Prairies and in BC

their immigration to Canada was encouraged by Kropotkin (after his visit to Edmonton in 1896) and by Tolstoy.

When authorities tried to change their traditional lifestyles, they reacted with public nakedness and burning of houses and other structures, as pictured in sensational photos carried by Canadian newspapers of the 1960s and 1970s.

(less-traditional Tolstoyan communities were founded in U.S. (Leclaire, Illinois; Christian commonwealth, Georgia).

Perhaps in Canada too, but I don't know of them.)

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Communities categorized:

Temperance colonies on Prairies

Temperance colony at Saskatoon 1883- (Rasporich, "Utopian Ideals...", p. 365-

see Bruce Peel Saskatoon Story)

Barr Colony (Lloydminster)

(and likely many more, including those mentioned in Qu'Appelle valley above

===

Religious settlements

Mormon settlements in southern Alberta

Doukhobor settlements in eastern Saskatchewan, at Swan River (see "Tolstoyan colonies" below)

(see Wiki Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood, Canadian Community Doukhobors (1900-1938)

Dreamers at Medicine Hat in 1907-08 (Rasporich, "Utopian Ideals...", p. 370)

But religious groups were mostly kept out of Canada by immigration officials.

(see Howard Palmer, "Responses to Foreign Immigration, Nativism and Ethnic Toleration 1880-1920" UofA thesis (1971).

see C.A. Dawson Group Settlement - Ethnic Communities in Western Canada (1936)

================================

from "Canadian Utopias project" online:

(https://canadianutopiasproject.ca/settlements/?doing_wp_cron=1745643190.5996739864349365234375)

Bekevar SK – formed 1900 with core population from the single Hungarian village that it replicated
Bellamy Village ON – proposed 1891 by disciple of Edward Bellamy’s socialist principles
Colony of Avalon NL – 1621, George Calvert’s effort to create permanent fishing settlement offering individuals freedom of religious choice
Community Farm of the Brethren – 1941, founded by Hungarian communist-turned-Apostolic Christian, Julius Kubassek
Compton Community of Belle River & Bangor PE – 1909 millenarian communal kin group
Esterhaz-Kaposvar SK – 1886, second village in Canada established by Paul O. Esterhazy, special agent of Hungarian immigration
Gardenvale QC – 1918, inspired by Ebenezer Howard’s town plans, FG Todd’s landscapes, Antigonish Movement study clubs
Grand Falls NL – 1905 “garden city” as mill town realized to produce newsprint for London press baron, Alfred Harmsworth
Hun’s Valley MB – 1885, first of Paul Esterhazy’s prairie settlements formed with mainly Magyar & Slovak Catholic families from Pennsylvanian mining region
La Kanado QC – rural farming collective for unemployed
Markland NL – 1934, first of 8 settlements incorporating communal farming, social & health programs, & Norwegian-style “folk” school
Maxwell ON – 1829, inspired by Robert Owen’s principles of common ownership & collective living
Otthon SK – 1894, founded by Rev. Janos Kovacs as farming settlement with settlers from Pennsylvanian mining region & Hungary
Pennfield NB (a.k.a. Beaver Harbour) – 1783 settlement by Quakers from U.S.A., all of whom signed pledge not to buy, sell, or keep slaves
Port Union NL – 1916, only North American utopian town built by a workers’ union
Rainbow Valley Colony BC – late 1920s colony of religious dissenters seeking simple lives
Ruskin BC – 1895, inspired by John Ruskin’s ideas of social reform via arts & crafts
Sacred Heart ON – 1934 Depression relief settlement using principles of barter, cooperation on privately purchased land
St. Ann’s NS – 1819 settlement headed by Norman McLeod to promote rigorous approach to Presbyterianism
Sammon Takojat BC (a.k.a. Webster’s Corners) – 1905, Matti Kurikka’s second effort to combine theosophical and communal values in a settlement
Sharon ON (a.k.a. Children of Peace) – 1812, former Quakers led by David Willson to form unique Christian sect
Shomria Farm ON – 1944, f
arm inspired by Zionist movement to encourage collective living
Sointula BC – 1901 Finnish settlement guided by Matti Kurikka & AB Makela using socialist-cooperative principles
Standfast Bible Student Colony BC – 1923, members living simply & communally while awaiting the end of the world
Sylvan Lake AB – 1906, established by Adalbert Tanche, inspired by social utopian model of Charles Fourier
Tompkinsville NS – cooperative housing built 1937 in coal-mining town inspired by Antigonish Movement, Mary Arnold, local families’ study club

================

Utopian Colonies in the U.S.

A staggering number of utopian and socialist settlements or communes have been established in the U.S. since 1820. Many were short lived but others have survived for more than 50 years.

"According to Bestor’s exhaustive list, 96 utopian communities were established in the United States between 1820 and 1860. (see Arthur E. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias: The Sectarian and Owenite Phases of Communitarian Socialism in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970), 235-42.

According to Fogarty and Stephan, at least 150 communities were established between 1870 and 1900.

(see Karen H. and G. Edward Stephan, “Religion and the Survival of Utopian Communities,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 12:1 (March, 1973): Appendix, 95-9.

Robert S. Fogarty, All Things New: American Communes and Utopian Movements, 1860-1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), appendix, 227-33. "

(from Sarah Copenhaver Matherly, “The Age of Associated Effort”: Communitarian Reform at Topolobampo, Mexico, 1872-1896.)

Motherly went on to say that communitarian ideas spread in the late 1800s...

"by the time the People’s Party emerged officially in 1892, it had actively incorporated several central communitarian ideas into its platform, most notably public ownership of the railroad and telegraph, and fiat currency."4

These populists were also communitarians; indeed, it is difficult to enumerate all of the populist communitarian colonies because there were so many. In 1897 Eugene Debs himself pursued the creation of a western cooperative commonwealth for unemployed workers, though it came to nothing.

Of the communities that lasted more than a few months, some examples are:

-Altruria (California)

-Colorado Cooperative Colony,

-Equality Colony (Washington)

-the Fairhope Industrial Association (Alabama) [see below],

-Freedom Colony (Kansas)

-Home Employment Cooperative Company (Missouri),

-Kaweah Colony (California)and

-Puget Sound Colony (Washington)

-Ruskin Commonwealth (Tennessee).

Participation in these communities can be summed up in the words of one member of the Colorado Cooperative Colony:

“We do not look for any relief on political lines for years to come. I therefore maintain that through co-operative methods only will any relief come to the masses.” (Matherly, [Topolobompa])

===

Associationists of the 1840s and 1850s,

America’s most popular nineteenth-century communal movement.

From the 1840s to 1860s, Associationists founded dozens of phalanxes around the nation, including the popular Brook Farm community outside of Boston.

(from Garcia, "Healthy Paradise" online)

inspired Annie and Alfred Cridge who, with her brother William Denton, published the newspaper The Vanguard, published in Dayton, Ohio in the 1870s. It extolled the virtues of agricultural communal living. The Vanguard gave space to “connection spaces” and news columns on “Reform Communities” to inform readers of established communes.

The Cridges were wide-ranging reformers and visionaries including striving for proportional representation.

(see Montopedia blog "Annie Denton Cridge") ..."

https://montopedia.wixsite.com/montopedia/post/pantheon-of-reformers-alfred-cridge-annie-denton-cridge-alfred-jr-and-william-denton

Annie Denton Cridge was author of groundbreaking feminist utopian novel Man's Rights or how would you like it? Comprising Dreams (1870). It was published in Woodhull's and Claflin's Weekly, a magazine co-founded by Victoria Woodhull.

========

From the 1860s to the 1880s, Americans founded multiple utopian-socialist communities that highlighted the importance of a vegetarian diet and clean living such as Hygieana, Cedar Vale, the Lord’s Farm, Societas Fraternia, Joyful, Israelites, and various Brotherhood of Light and Theosophist communities.

from Ashley Garcia, A HEALTHY PARADISE: ANNIE DENTON CRIDGE’S FEMINIST UTOPIA

https://commonplace.online/article/a-healthy-paradise/

==================================================================

Wikipedia: "List of American Utopian communities"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_utopian_communities

too numerous to name here

Icarians are listed there.

Here is a bit of additional info. on the Icarians.

Icarians was a communistic movement founded in 1847

based on utopian ideas promulgated in M. Cabet's book The Voyage to Icaria

(see Wiki: The Voyage to Icaria)

established colonies at various locations in the U.S. -

along the Red River, Texas, Denton County, TX

Nauvoo, Illinois

Adams County, Iowa, (1854-1890) (see "New Icarian Community records in Adams County, Iowa, 1854-1890", world cat.org)

Missouri (Cheltenham, Missouri)

California (Icaria-Sperenza Commune at Sonoma County and at Cloverdale, CA

with break-away groups at Corning, Iowa (disbanded in 1898).

(see Encyclopedia of Social Reform;

Wikipedia articles: Icarians;

Albert Shaw. Icaria A Chapter in the History of Communism.

This work (page 175-186) recounts a variety of other intentional settlements in the U.S. some assisted by veterans of the Icarias movement, including:

Brook Farm at Boston;

"New Odessa" community at Douglas County, Oregon 1882- (p. 182)

"Mutual Aid Community" at Glen-Allen, Missouri 1882-ish (p. 181)

available at Hathi trust:

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiuo.ark:/13960/t5r78bp6f&seq=7

see also Brief history of Icaria : constitution, laws and regulations of the Icarian community. Author:Icarian Community English, 1880

worldcat.org lists that and 35 other books and publications by or about Icaria.

see Hine, Robert V. California's utopian colonies. New York: Norton, 1973

National Icarian Heritage Society. A photographic history of Icaria-Speranza: a French utopian experiment at Cloverdale, California. Nauvoo, IL: The Society,1989

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not listed on Wikipedia's list:

Fairhope Single Tax colony at Mobile Bay, Alabama [1894-present?]

supported by Joe Fels, of Fels-Naptha Soap company

"The land was held on Single Tax principles, and as far as it was possible for a small community embraced by a larger one not governed by these principles, it was hoped that it might furnish an object lesson." (GGG, May 25, 1910, p. 23)

Joe Fels went on to buy 1300 acres in UK for a labour colony for the unemployed, at Hollesley Bay.

He also purchased 600 acres at Maylands, Essex, of which a large part is "devoted to French gardening and intensive cultivation by small holders."

[Grain Growers Guide article has much discourse on philosophy of utopian communities, human frailty and governmental rigidity.]

(GGG, May 25, 1910, p. 23)

"What is now the city of Fairhope, Baldwin County, was established in 1894 as a model community based on what Ernest Berry Gaston, a young Iowa journalist and Populist Party officer, called "cooperative individualism," a term he introduced to the lexicon of American reform....

[post WWII or in late 1900s] --The Single Tax Corporation no longer had the ability to control land speculation and had long-since run out of the free land that had once been its raison d'être."

from Encyclopedia of Alabama

https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/fairhope/

(no Wikipedia article)

(feminist co-operator writer Marie Howland lived in the Pacific Colony (see Topolobampo below) then lived at Fairhope pre-WWI.)

=========

The North American Phalanx, of Monmouth county, New Jersey

est. in 1843

based on Brisbane's theories

described in Charles Sears's 1886 book The North American Phalanx (hathi trust online)

book's intro was written by Edward Howland, husband of Marie Howland, mentioned above and below.

============

Tolstoyan communities in the U.S.

Ernest Howard Crosby was a notable Tolstoyan in the United States. He was a supporter of the Christian Commonwealth Colony in Columbus, Georgia, which was established in 1896 by a number of Christian socialists. It comprised 932 acres (3.77 sq. km).[11] The residents were influenced by the views of Henry George and Edward Bellamy.

N.O. Nelson, a Tolstoyan, founded the Leclaire co-operative village at Edwardsville, Illinois in 1890. With the economic base of a plumbing supply factory, it prospered. It offered affordable homes, a healthful environment, free education and opportunities for recreation and self-improvement, and pleasant working conditions at the N.O. Nelson Manufacturing Company plant. But Nelson's other co-operative projects (at New Orleans) faltered, and he was forced from the executive of Leclaire in 1918. He died in 1922. The village of Leclaire was annexed by Edwardsville in 1934, ending the socialist experience.

(https://www.historic-leclaire.org/)

The Encyclopedia of Social Reform has articles on Leclaire, Ill. and N.O. Nelson

=============

Mexico

Topolobampo, northern Sinaloa, Mexico 1886-

Credit Foncier Company of Sinaloa

"The driving force behind this company was Albert Kimsey Owen (1847-1916). At the age of twenty-four Owen began working as a surveyor and civil engineer for William J. Palmer and the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, and in the spring of 1872 he was sent to survey the west coast of Mexico for promising harbour sites, and there he had his first look at Topolobampo Bay, near Los Mochis, Sinaloa. Thereafter Owen was committed to the dream of establishing a port at Topolobampo.

Owen’s original plan was to build a railroad from Texas to Topolobampo (the Texas, Topolobampo, and Pacific Railroad), but he also envisaged settlements at the Mexican end including a grand city called Pacific City as well as several agricultural colonies along the Fuerte River.

Having grown up with a Quaker father and having lived for a time at Robert Owen’s utopian colony in New Harmony, Indiana [see above], he was a staunch and idealistic socialist. So his plans envisaged a cooperative colony where the reorganization of labour and distribution followed the principles laid out in his essay Integral Co-Operation.

his essay Integral Co-Operation, a socioeconomic treatise, determined that labour was the source of all wealth, and that wealth, the end product of labour, should be justly dispersed through a system of credits."

Actually Albert Kimsey Owen published many things

-Integral co-operation : its practical application (1884)

-Integral co-operation : its practical application (1889) subtitle: "The Credit Foncier Company of Sinaloa A Social Study." 224 pages. published by John W. Lovell Company.

-Integral co-operation at work (1890). includes detailed Biography of A.K. Owens, p. 205/224-212/224)

(all three available online at Hathi trust)

also

-I Dream of an Ideal City, and

-various pamphlets on Topolobompa.

(https://utopias.library.fresnostate.edu/exhibits/show/hope-versus-reality--how-perfe/the-beginning-of-hope)

"The Credit Foncier Company of Sinaloa was started in 1886.

It issued stock, script and credits in return for labour.

the stock certificates or scrip were signed by John Lovell, a Canadian book publisher and reformer. [see below]

Supplies for the colonists were purchased through the commissary, and exchanged to colonists for credits (script) or money, whilst the produce of colonists were received by the commissary, credits being given to the producers.

Products delivered by colonists to the commissary were not always saleable, yet the producers demanded credits that they could exchange for other goods.

“Instead of giving credits on the basis of a service for a service, we have given them upon the communistic principle of ‘to each according to his needs’ ... we have got to conduct the Colony on business lines; we cannot afford to make it a charitable asylum where there is free food without labor.” [speaker not stated - Owen speaking?]

How to balance the needs of colonists against their earnings became a subject of much controversy. Single men earned as much as the heads of families - yet families have to be fed in a co-operative commonwealth. This issue was resolved by allotting a five-day ration per week to non-productive members of families [the children in the familes], but single men maintained that as they worked all day in the fields in exchange for credits, the same as the family men, and helped provide food for the families, they were entitled to have their clothes washed and mended, and their bachelor quarters cared for. At this point many of the women balked, although some women worked long and patiently in the cause of complete Integral Cooperation.

(from U.S. Mexican Numismatic Association, "Credit Foncier of Sinaloa" online)

===

John Wurtele Lovell was born on 6 November 1851 in Montreal, Canada where his father, John Lovell, was the founder of the Lovell Printing and Publishing Company. John was apprenticed to his father at a young age and in 1873 was sent to manage his father’s printing plant in Rouses Point, New York.

Three years later, he formed the publishing firm of Lovell, Adam & Company along with his father and fellow Canadian G. Mercer Adam. The firm was soon renamed Lovell, Adam, Wesson & Company with the admittance of Francis L. Wesson in New York City.

In 1878 John W. Lovell became an independent publisher but failed in 1881. He established the John W. Lovell Company the next year, also located in New York City. Lovell took advantage of the lack of international copyright laws and was well known as a pirate and publisher of non-copyrighted books. Lovell reprinted cheap reprints for the masses both in series of paperbound and cloth volumes.

Lovell's Library, a series of paperbacks priced at ten, twenty or thirty cents, was probably his single greatest achievement in terms of popularity.

In 1888 John and his brother Frank formed the Frank F. Lovell & Company in New York. In June 1889 John announced his intention to form a “Book Trust” in order to eliminate competition and intense price-cutting among the cheap book publishers. In essence, Lovell was proposing a monopoly to control production costs in the absence of international copyright laws. Publishers were offered the opportunity to join the monopoly or be forced out of business. Although many publishers were dubious of Lovell’s grandiose plans, he did manage to organize the United States Book Company in July 1890, which initially numbered about a dozen firms, including the Frank F. Lovell & Company. Within three years, however, this firm went into bankruptcy and by 1900 Lovell had completely disappeared from the annals of publishing.

Lovell was an ardent reformer and loyal supporter of Albert Kinsey Owen.

He played an important role in American theosophy, being a founding member of the Theosophical Society.

He died in 1932. The New York Times published an obituary on 22 April 1932

John W. Lovell, quoted in Reynolds, Catspaw Utopia, 25.

(Reynolds, Ray. Cat’spaw Utopia. 2nd ed, The Borgo Press, San Bernardino California, 1996)

Theosophical Wiki online has article on John W. Lovell

=====

the colony's newspaper, Credit Foncier of Sinaloa, began publication in New Jersey in 1885. edited by Mrs. Marie Howland.

dedicated to "integral co-operation".

it was moved to Sinaloa in 1888.

====

(Marie Howland 1836-1921)

Her career as an author, political propagandist, and pioneering architect began as a result of her involvement with followers of the utopian socialist Charles Fourier in New York City in the 1850s. ...

During the 1860s, Howland lived in the Familistère, or Social Palace, a Fourieristic community in Guise, France. ...

Marie Howland, like Cridge, was a utopian-socialist who participated in the Associationist movement and lived in several communes throughout her life...

so said Ashley Garcia, "A HEALTHY PARADISE: ANNIE DENTON CRIDGE’S FEMINIST UTOPIA" online https://commonplace.online/article/a-healthy-paradise/

Marie Case divorced her husband, and married Edward Howland

===================

Edward Howland 1832-1890.

he wrote book Grant as a soldier and statesman; Annals of North America; History of the Sea; Ocean's Story.

then developed interest in labour issues.

"In the 1870s, his work focused on the railroad industry and was published in the periodical Harper’s.

He also authored The Palace of Industry: An Account of the Experiment at Guise, France (1872). (Pfaff (Bohemian New York) website)

[Lause, Mark A. The Antebellum Crisis and America's First Bohemians. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2009.

Edward Howland was part of the Unitary Household experiment. It was here that he met Marie Stevens, the love of his life. (66,68)]

=========

Howland married Marie Case (nee Stevens) a “strong-minded New England school-teacher, who imbued him with schemes for the amelioration of the human race” (“General Gossip” 479).

Her husband at the time, Lyman W. Case, rescinded their marriage on account of how happy his wife and Howland seemed together, and the three remained lifelong friends (Lause 68).

Later, Howland and his wife journeyed to Mexico to become part of an "American socialistic colony at Topolobampo" (“General Gossip” 479). A

After his death, Howland’s widow continued their work in Mexico." [later moving to Fairhope - see below]

(from Pfaff (Bohemian New York) website, https://pfaffs.web.lehigh.edu/node/54188)

====

from Wiki Marie Howland:

Working with her husband [Edward Howland], Howland for a brief period edited two journals devoted to the propagation of the principles of economic cooperation: the Credit Foncier of Sinaloa and Social Solutions.

Howland's 1873 translation of J. A. B. Godin's Social Solutions, an in-depth presentation of the political philosophy responsible for the founding of the Social Palace in Guise, was published in her journal Social Solutions.

[before her stay at the "Pacific Colony", she lived at J.A.B. Godin's Familistere de Guise (Social Palace) (see above)]

author of Papa's Own Girl (1874), a novel about a father and daughter living in a comparable fictional establishment in New England. The heroine, Clara Forest, goes on to live a satisfying life as an independent businesswoman.

The book was controversial but also a popular success in its day. Later editions altered the title to The Familistère.

from Encyclopedia.com (https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/howland-marie)

[Marie Howland was a writer and also an urban designer/architect.

"Her involvement was directly instrumental in changing Owen's initial plans for single-family dwellings to architectural designs stressing collective arrangements organized to reduce the domestic work of women, thus freeing them for more direct participation in the government of the community. In her studies of American women architects and social reformers, the historian Dolores Hayden has discovered and made public many of Howland's original designs. They include 'resident hotels, row houses linked to communal kitchen, and picturesque suburban houses with cooperative kitchen facilities.'

Howland lived at the Pacific Colony for several years but eventually left because of hostility to certain aspects of her feminism, primarily her advocacy of free love. [reference her free love to Edward Howland and how her husband Case stood aside to let them marry]

She subsequently lived in a Fairhope, Alabama, single-tax community, where she served as a librarian." (Fairhope -- see above)

https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/howland-marie

===

A charter was drawn up for the "Pacific Colony".

charter of the Company was filed in Colorado.

the colony's main remunerative industry was a tinware manufactury. But Owen also envisioned farms along the Fuerte River, a proper harbour at Topolobampo and a city (Pacific City), as mentioned above.

300 to 500 U.S. colonists were living and working in the colony at the harbour of Topolobampo by 1892.

[Edward Howland, husband of Marie Howland, died in 1890, likely at Topolobompa]

An optimistic future for the settlement was predicted in a leaflet issued in 1892 -- Credit Foncier of Sinaloa - The Topolobampo Colonists: What is Said of Them

https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb2736562m

And at that time, Mexican president Diaz is quoted as announcing that "the Topolobampo colonists have built a canal eleven kilometres in length and a customs house in accordance with the terms of their concession."

"The Custom House was 50 x 40 feet, with a 10 ft.-wide porch on three sides. It was built of red porphyry and was on the south-east corner of the block, 600 x 300 ft., which was reserved for Federal offices. [It was nearby to Pioneer Cove, which was intended to become a port]. The cost was $8,109 Mexican silver, and was entirely the work of the colonists, who even burnt the lime and made 80,000 bricks to cover the roof and to make the fireplaces and chimneys."

The canal had been completed and water was flowing through it, according to the leaflet.

Some colonists stated that they had been there five and a half years and found co-op life just fine. the climate was easy and irrigated fields grew crops and produce well.

At that time the colony contained 446 people, including 150 children. This was likely about its peak membership. (Encyclopedia of Social Reform)

(a new group of settlers moved in -- The Kansas Sinaloa Investment Company.

a photo on the numismatic website: "The Headquarters of The Kansas Sinaloa Investment Company at Los Tastes. It is a wattle, or a house with woven brush sides plastered with mud and having a flat brush roof covered with earth. The tree is a mesquite, a species of locust or acacia. The mesquite is the largest wood we have on our lands. Director Wilber stands in front of the door; next to him is Hon. C. B. Hoffman, President of The Kansas Sinaloa Investment Company, and on the extreme right is friend E.E. Thornton, who is now (July, 1892) in Puget Sound, Washington, getting lumber for the Colonists."

(from U.S. Mexican Numismatic Association, "Credit Foncier of Sinaloa" online)

===

family life was preserved in the Topolobampo colony (not like other commune settlements where free love was engaged in). (Marie's affection for Howland went against the grain of this respect for family.)

"Even without the free love questions, difference did spring up. A Free Land Company was formed to oppose the original Credit Foncier Company headed by Owen, and the life of the colony gradually ended." (Encyclopedia of Social Reform)

The colony ultimately failed, for a variety of reasons. The colony was prone to variety of difficulties, practical and economic/social.

"Owen left the colony in 1893, and by then it was, for all intents and purposes, defunct. Owen’s proposed railroad, which eventually became the Chihuahua and Pacific Railroad, was not fully realized until 1962." (from U.S. Mexican Numismatic Association, "Credit Foncier of Sinaloa" online)

sources above:

Encyclopedia of Social Reform has a small article on this co-operative colony.

U.S. Mexican Numismatic Association, "Credit Foncier of Sinaloa" online.

https://papermoneyofmexico.com/history/sinaloa/credit-foncier#:~:text=This%20socioeconomic%20treatise%20determined%20that,credits%20in%20return%20for%20labour.

also The Credit Foncier of Sinaloa. Mar.13, 1888 (print on demand book) not seen:

Topolobampo Collection (USC San Diego) (described online)

Extent 137 digital objects.

Description:

The Topolobampo Collection contains Albert Kimsey Owen's business records and promotional materials related to the colony and railroad enterprise established on Topolobampo Bay, Sinaloa, Mexico between 1872 and 1910. Materials include business correspondence, writings by Owen, legal documents, descriptions of corporate entities, promotional materials, images of the colony, maps, and plans of Pacific City. Prominent correspondents include C.B. Hoffman, John W. Lovell, J.H. Rice, and Arthur E. Stilwell. Corporations represented in the collection include the Credit Foncier Company; the Texas, Topolobampo and Pacific Railroad and Telegraph Company; the Mexican Western Railroad; and the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway Company. Materials that describe day-to-day life in the colony are not represented in the collection.

comprehensive listing of collection fonds online)

https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/collection/bb3896979f

====

as well there is this comprehensive history of the settlement and project:

Sarah Copenhaver Matherly

“The Age of Associated Effort”: Communitarian Reform at Topolobampo, Mexico, 1872-1896

A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY RECOMMENDED FOR ACCEPTANCE BY THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

Adviser: Sean Wilentz

September 2019 (accessed online feb 2025)

some notes:

p. 200 201 land ownership in doubt. Owens had the concession

Credit Foncier leadership had control of company but not the land

Kansas CL came in with Owens approval, split community

p. 202 Ira Kneeland expected TCFC to be an agricultural co-operative along line of the Farmers Alliance or the Grange

p. 202 money question -- CFC scrip, inspired by Owen's days as Greenbacker

p. 203 some of Kansas CL people were, like Owens, former political reformer involved in labour politics. giving that up, they, like Owens, had decided to engage in direct action through association. ...

===

Ira Kneeland's photos of Topolobompa

Topolobampo Collection

Owning Institution: California State University, Fresno

(Calisphere University of California website)

The Topolobampo digitized collection consists of photographs taken by colonist and official photographer for the Credit Foncier Company of Sinaloa, Ira Kneeland. The photographs document the area around Topolobampo bay during the late 19th century, focusing on the efforts of Albert Kimsey Owen and others to establish a socialist utopian colony.

The Topolobampo co-operative colony was founded at Topolobampo Bay near Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico, by a group of American colonists in 1886. The colony was established and governed under a set of idealistic bylaws, predicated on socialistic reforms. The driving force behind the colonization effort was Albert Kimsey Owen (1847-1916).

Owen began working as a surveyor and civil engineer for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. In the course of his work, Owen was sent to Mexico's west coast to look for promising harbor sites, and there he had his first look at Topolobampo Bay.

From 1873 through 1880 Owen worked to implement his dream of a port at Topolobampo Bay. He quickly organized an American syndicate and with a small contingent, embarked on a journey in late August of 1880, bound for Vera Cruz, Mexico. The ship was lost in a hurricane off the coast of Florida with only four survivors. The accident set back Owen five years.

Owen’s original plan was to build a railroad from Texas to Topolobampo (the Texas, Topolobampo, and Pacific Railroad). However, Owen’s family background and experiences living at another utopian colony in Indiana led to him being a staunch and idealistic socialist in addition to being a railroad promoter and engineer. His plan included a cooperative colony in Sinaloa where the re-organization of labor and distribution followed the principles laid out in his essay Integral Co-Operation. Out of this plan came the Credit Foncier Company of Sinaola. The Credit Foncier Company issued stock, script and credits in return for labor which benefited the colony. It was also the agency used to acquire and hold land for Owen and the colony.

Plans for the colony included a grand city called Pacific City, based on Owen’s utopian ideal, as well as several agricultural colonies along the Fuerte River to the north of Topolobampo Bay. The railroad and the colony were to be mutually beneficial.

However, the colony never had much success and the premature settling of twenty-seven colonists at Topolobampo in 1886 ultimately concluded with the "grand experiment's" failure. The reasons were multifarious and complex.

The digitized collection consists of photographs taken by Ira Kneeland, the colony’s official photographer.

View this collection on the contributor's website.

DataSpace: "The Age of Associated Effort": Communitarian Reform at Topolobampo, Mexico, 1872-1896

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Denmark

Freetown Christiania

(Danish: Fristaden Christiania), also known as Christiania or simply Staden

an intentional community and anarchist commune in the Christianshavn neighbourhood of the Danish capital city of Copenhagen. It began in 1971 as a squatted military base. Its main selling street, Pusher Street, was famous for its open illegal trade of cannabis until 2024.

2024 Pusher Street was shut down in a collaborative effort between police and the majority of the inhabitants with the street being physically dug up.

excerpt from Wiki "Freetown Christiania"

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Utopian literature

As mentioned in passing above, books have been used to express aspirations towards gentler, better way of living.

A separate Montopedia blog gives info on books on utopian themes.

Montopedia

What is, was and could be

Intentional communities -- utopian, reform, single tax, temperance, religious, free love communities and settlements in Canada, the U.S.

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