The ​Universal Life Church Picnic

Idahoans are seldom quick to embrace cutting-edge societal trends. “Idaho’s Woodstock” came along two years after the real thing. But it was the fame and infamy of that iconic music festival that caused the imaginations of many Idahoans to soar with hope or trepidation in the summer of 1971. The younger generation, in their teens and twenties, hoped for big-name bands like Iron Butterfly, Santana, and Grand Funk Railroad. The generation that had passed the age of 30, that famous barrier to trustworthiness at the time, envisioned drugged-out hippies by the thousands and the moral calamity of free love. The event did not live up to the imagination of either group. The poster below advertising the picnic belongs to former Idaho Park and Recreation Board Chair Steve Klatt of Sandpoint. He attended the picnic decades before his service on the board, and was lucky enough to find and save one of the posters, which were created by R. Crumb of “Keep on Truckin’” fame. The photos in this post are also courtesy of Steve Klatt.

​In May 1971, organizers of something called the Universal Life Church Picnic filed a form with Farragut State Park for a “church picnic attended by at least 200 people.” That probably seemed inconsequential to park manager John Grieg. Farragut had hosted nearly 35,000 people for six days just two years earlier, during the National Boy Scout Jamboree. It soon became obvious these folks were not Boy Scouts.

​Word reached local law enforcement personnel that hippies were about to descend. Law enforcement quickly asked the Idaho Department of Parks to deny the seemingly innocuous permit. As parks officials dithered, north Idaho leaders asked the governor to intervene. Gov. Cecil D. Andrus said that since all the concerns expressed were purely speculative, he had no reason to deny a church from meeting on state land.

​The bands that played were a who’s who of who’s that? Cadillac, Annakonda, Celebration, Greenfield Morning, and Sidartha were some of the bands that day. When it was all over, park manager Greig was quoted as saying, “As far as I’m concerned, they can have one of these every weekend, all summer. The picnickers left the park cleaner than the Boy Scouts did and we can really use all the money it collects at the entrance.”

​There were no arrests made at the event. Park rangers at the entrance charged a $2 camping fee and collected dollar bills in paper bags from some 15,000 attendees. A little skinny dipping and open use of marijuana were noted by the Spokesman Review. Meanwhile, the Universal Life Church was offering free minister’s licenses at the event, just as they do today online.

​Not everybody in Idaho was as pleased with the picnic as the park manager was. A self-appointed committee led by Stanley D. Crow of Nampa dissects every detail of the picnic in a document called “The Farragut Report: A Study of the Universal Life Church Picnic Held at Farragut State Park and Recommendations for Legislative and Administrative Action.”

The event, if not the report, inoculated the agency for 40 years against rock concerts at Farragut State Park. The 65,000-person amphitheater originally built for the World Scout Jamboree, along with available parking for hundreds of cars, would have made Farragut State Park a logical site for stadium-sized concerts serving Spokane, Coeur d’Alene, and other points in the Pacific Northwest, but agency officials showed little enthusiasm for another concert in subsequent years.
 
This story was taken from my 2017 book Images of America, Idaho’s State Parks.