Sandstone Retreat records, circa 1968-1981.
Collection Number: 7834

Sandstone Movie

In 1968 John and Barbara Williamson, a married couple, purchased a 15 acre estate known as the Sandstone Ranch in Topanga Canyon outside of Los Angeles. John and Barbara were interested in revolutionary theories for improving the human condition and focused their hopes on addressing what they believed were society's false assumptions about love and marriage. After extensive remodeling, they opened Sandstone Retreat as a private, secluded commune for adults where nudity and open sexuality were encouraged. The goal of this group experiment was to explore an alternative lifestyle in a community where a person's mind, body and sexuality came together in total abandonment. Sandstone had beautiful views of the Malibu Mountains and Pacific Ocean. The combination of natural beauty and pleasure were intended to offer a retreat from artificiality.

Formally known as the Sandstone Foundation for Community Systems Research, Inc., research was part of its intentions and purpose. John was an engineer with a focus on whole systems. He researched why our culture resulted in such misery, unhappiness and chaos, and he determined that our society's principles were based on false assumptions, especially those about sex and sexuality.

Sandstone was based on a concept that John and Barbara called, "open sexuality." Sandstone offered individuals and couples an opportunity to love openly and unselfishly. John and Barbara's philosophy was one of living with like-minded pleasure seekers, where married couples could openly share their mates with others just for the sheer pleasure of it; and could joyfully and freely have sex just because they wanted to and it felt good, without jealousy and possessiveness. They believed that this concept wouldn't make couples stop loving one another, when done with the other's full knowledge and approval; for if you really deeply loved someone, you would want them to experience all the pleasures life has to offer. They believed society would have more freedom if people practiced openness and honesty in their sexual relations and experienced sex with a group of people. They introduced this idea of "open sexuality" as a viable alternate lifestyle that would change the way the world viewed marriage, commitments and sexuality. John believed that sexual democracy is a birthright.

Gay Talese put Sandstone on the cultural map. After living at Sandstone and experiencing it first hand, he wrote Thy Neighbor's Wife in 1980, an examination of America's changing sexual culture. Talese writes about John Williamson, "Like the founding fathers of other utopian settlements in the past, he was unhappy with the world around him. He regarded contemporary life in America as destructive to the spirit, organized religion as a celestial swindle, the federal government as cumbersome and avaricious; he saw the average wage earner as existing only with detached participation in a computerized society." Robert Francoeur wrote extensively about Sandstone in his book, Hot and Cool Sex; and in the 1973 edition of More Joy of Sex, Dr. Alex Comfort discussed the ideas of the Sandstone Retreat.

Sandstone became one of the hubs of the sexual revolution. Over the years, magazine articles referred to Barbara as "the most liberated woman in America," a courageous woman who threw herself into the quest for an alternative lifestyle, a woman unafraid to say she wanted to change the world. Few women at this time in history had attempted to go up against the cultural edicts as Barbara did. Media referred to John as the "king of the sexual revolution" and the "messiah of sex."

In 1973, the Williamsons decided to close Sandstone and set their sights on a bigger project to influence culture. They aimed to build a tribal community in the wilderness of Montana to improve humanity and help make the world a better place. There scientists and religious leaders would work together in planning the future in order to steer our society to flourish. This undertaking was called Project Synergy, but the Federal Government claimed the site and prevented any further building. The idea never came to fruition.

John died March 24, 2013 in Fallon, Nevada where he and Barbara had created Tiger Touch Sanctuary, a place and home where big cats could safely and lovingly live out the rest of their lives in peace.

Records of running the social and business life at Sandstone, especially during its peak years 1970-1972, including original drafts of John Williamson's papers and presentations, a folder of his research and unpublished poems, newsletters and flyers, clippings of articles and publicity about Sandstone, legal documents, about 200 copies of photographs of the center, events, and key Sandstone members dining and doing massage, and approximately 250 pages of correspondence. The correspondence, 1970-1981, is mostly between John and reporters, academics, psychologists, and people the medical community who were interested in learning about Sandstone and people in the Hollywood movie business. Among the correspondence are: Erica Abeel, New York magazine writer; Ruth Beasley, Coordinator of Information Services at Indiana University/Institute for Sex Research, Inc.; Steve and Judy Beltz, Directors of Research at Sandstone; Dr. Alex Comfort, author of The Joy of Sex, professor at University College in London, and visiting Professor at UC Berkeley ca. 1970; Albert V. Freeman, Ph.D., Executive Director of the Institute for the Scientific Study of Human Sexual Potential, Board Member of Sandstone Retreat, Chairperson of the Task Force on Sexual Mores, Committee on Social Issues, California State Psychological Association; and New York writer Gay Talese. It is mostly from within the United States, but includes 1970 correspondence with Ron Laytner, a photojournalist in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Marcelo Correia from Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, and Robert N. Whitehurst, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada, and Sandstone Retreat Board Member.

Also, regular daily business correspondence about running the center, a DVD with a documentary about Sandstone created and financed by admirers and insiders, and some pamphlets and books from their library (which may be cataloged separately).

Sandstone Retreat records, #7834. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.