La Honda, California

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

La Honda is a small California town located in the Santa Cruz Mountains between Silicon Valley and the Pacific coast. Its population is approximately 1500 with a few hundred more living on the outskirts of town. It is near the La Honda Creek Open Space Preserve. It's situated alongside Highway 84 on its downward slope towards the Pacific ocean. That is, on the ocean side of the Coastal Range.

The ZIP Code for La Honda is 94020 and the community is located in Area Code 650. Wired numbers in the La Honda telephone exchange follow the pattern 747-xxxx while wired telephones along Portola Park Road work out of Los Altos exchange with 94x-xxxx numbers. U.S. Geological Survey NAD83 coordinates for the community are 37°19′09″N, 122°16′27″W and the Survey says Lahonda is a historic variant of the modern spelling.

The book A Separate Place by Charles Jones describes the people, history, and landscape of La Honda.

1 Landmarks
2 1960s History
3 Sources
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Landmarks

Area landmarks include the Glenwood Boys Ranch, (located along Alpine Road.) The school is referred to by locals as the Log Cabin School For Boys. The camp has two schools: Log Cabin High School, an alternative high school, and Glenwood Boys Ranch School, an elementary and middle school.

Additionally, along Alpine road is the "Sherriffs honor camp". This camp serves as a correctional facility for non-violent offenders.

Apple Jack's, also written Applejacks, is a famous restaurant and bar located at 8790 La Honda Road. It's a long-time cultural presence in the community, (see 1960s History below).

[edit] 1960s History

La Honda is well known as one of the birthplaces of the Psychedelic era. Ken Kesey, the author of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Sometimes a Great Notion, Demon Box, Sailor Song and other books, owned a home in La Honda which served as the base of operations for The Merry Pranksters; they used LSD and other drugs, legal at the time, in order to open their minds to the vast potential of human ecstatic experience. It was around this time that software developer (and current La Honda resident) Paul Vixie, said to be under the influence of LSD, drafted standards for what would later become BIND, the Internet's core name server software. Other sources cite Mr. Vixie's date of birth as being 1963, making this story improbable.

The escapades of Kesey and the Merry Pranksters are documented in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, which describes the wildly painted school bus, 'Furthur,' driven by Neal Cassady, who had been the frenetic driver in Jack Kerouac's On The Road.

The La Honda house where Kesey's adventures became famous - one mile west of Applejack's saloon - has been faithfully restored after years of neglect and a near catastrophic flood in 1998.

[edit] Sources

U.S. Geological Survey, Geographic Names Information System.
Map: State of California, Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources, District 3, Map W3-10.