About Breitenbush
Our mission is to provide a safe and potent environment where people can renew and evolve in ways they never imagined.
All About Breitenbush
Land Acknowledgment ✦ Who We Are ✦ The Credo ✦ Sustainability ✦ History
Land Acknowledgment
Breitenbush Hot Springs, located on the side of Mt. Jefferson has been a meeting place for multiple tribes since time immemorial. Before colonization forced the removal of tribal peoples to reservations, the springs were utilized by indigenous tribes whose unceded land spans present day Washington, Oregon and Idaho. These include the Kalapuya (Cal-a-poo-ya) and Molalla (Mo-lah-lah) speaking peoples from the west side of the Cascades Mountains, also the Chinookan (Shi-newk-un) and Sahaptin (Sa-hawp-tin) speaking peoples from the east side of the mountains. One name for these springs was Altat Satash, and the mountain was called Seekseekqua or Kuassal Teminbi.
In ancestral times, the hot springs were known for their healing qualities and provided a rare opportunity to bathe in warm water. Ceremonies, teachings, and practices were developed and carried on specifically for the honoring and vitality of the hot springs and those who sought healing here. These practices were born at a time when the native peoples could freely communicate with the land and when the land spoke to them. The sacred wisdom of this land continues to exist in the souls, hearts and minds of tribal peoples still living today whose ancestors walked this sacred land, and we are now honored to partake of this wisdom in our own lives.
As the current stewards of Breitenbush, it is our duty to both protect and honor this place, and the peoples, past and current, who hold these springs as sacred in their cultural heritage.
Who We Are
Breitenbush is an intentional community and worker-owned cooperative. We, the members of the community, all live on 154 acres in this rugged and beautiful mountain setting and serve thousands of guests year-round. Our emphasis is on service to our guests, each other and to the greater global and universal community. Working at Breitenbush requires dedication to this service ethic, a sense of joy and excitement about your work, acceptance of personal responsibility and accountability, a desire for creativity and productivity and a willingness to communicate openly and honestly.
We are a small community – especially since the wildfires of 2020. Our community includes persons of all ages. We elect a very active Board of Directors from amongst our membership to which our managing directors are accountable.
Living and working here, while very rewarding, is also challenging for some. Housing is rustic and most people share bathroom and cooking facilities. To protect native wildlife, we have limited number of pets on land and ownership is carefully regulated..
We generate our own electricity from the river and use geothermal wells to meet our heating needs. The hot springs and wells provide the mineral water for our hot tubs and steam sauna.
The lodge at Breitenbush Hot Springs was part of a hot springs resort built in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s when using the hot mineral water was considered an important way for people to heal from various maladies. In the early 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s, the land was a favorite place for people to camp or have a simple cabin and enjoy the beautiful natural environment and hot waters. Then, for ten years the property was idle.
Alex Beamer purchased the property in 1977 and spent several years restoring the old resort and getting it ready to host guests again. People who wished to put their energies into this project, and who worked well with the people already here, were invited to come and join in restoring the facilities. In 1981, the Breitenbush community started hosting guests who participated in a variety of workshops, celebrations and personal retreats.
In 1985, the community purchased the land from Alex. In 1989, a worker-owned cooperative was formed.
– From an article by Peter Moore, Business Director.
“The thing that blows my mind about Breitenbush’s current human community is that we, this eclectic group of eccentric people, are able to function so well in so many critical areas. We operate an entire small town in the middle of the wilderness, including making our own electricity and heating our buildings with hot springs. We maintain enormously complex technical systems. We govern ourselves through an enthusiastic democratic process in which the power structure is circular, not pyramidal… At times we’re contentious, but we maintain high standards. It’s a happening scene.”
The Breitenbush Credo
We of the Breitenbush Community dedicate ourselves to living mindfully in the spirit of love, unity, honesty and service.
We see ourselves as guardians of Breitenbush Hot Springs safeguarding the earth and healing water, assuring their continued availability to all beings who respect them.
Our primary service is to provide a healing retreat and conference center, which promotes holistic health and spiritual growth, and facilitates the gathering of people in celebration of the experience of life. Our community is supported by the services we provide.
We are committed to the health and well-being of ourselves and our families, to live, work, play and grow together harmoniously. We mutually support and respect each person’s dignity, and awaken to the spirit within each of us which acknowledges that we are all one.
The community is committed to a life style conducive to holistic childrearing and personal growth.
Our precepts for self growth include: personal accountability, honest communication, awareness of our actions and the quality of their results, directing our energies to the positive, expressing appreciation for what others do, correcting what is clearly not working for the community or for us as individuals, assuming the responsibility for creating and sharing abundance, and choosing and re-choosing to be together.
We structure our lives such that we can experience daily the rewards of success, peacefulness and joy. It is our hope that the thriving community which we create will be an inspiration to others in their exploration of lifestyle and community.
We also extend ourselves to the greater society in which we live, the world community, and commit ourselves to being socially, spiritually, politically and environmentally responsible.
This credo was born of deliberations that lasted weeks in which the small circle of Breitenbush founding members worked hard to articulate its collective vision for the intentional community it was dreaming into. The credo has remained as written and unchanged since voted and agreed upon by consensus in the late 1970’s.
Sustainability
While at Breitenbush you are “off the grid.” The power of the river and heat from the hot springs, combined with simple living, allow us to thrive in this sanctuary without significant dependence on fossil fuels.
Our small hydroelectric plant produces about 40 kilowatts, the amount of electricity typically used in three urban homes. And yet it can support a community of about 85 full time residents and up to 250 guests. There is no extravagant use of electricity. By sharing kitchens, conducting electricity audits and avoiding power-hungry appliances like clothes dryers, the community is able to live within our energy limits.
In 2005, the community completed the multi-year project to rebuild the fish diversion and flume for the hydroelectric plant. The facility can be viewed from the footbridge over the river. A Shinto Torii Gate (constructed by community alumni using cedar logs from wind-downed trees on our property) soars over the head gates, welcoming the waters.
In its early years (1977-1980), the Breitenbush community drilled several geothermal (literally “heat from the earth”) wells and developed the technology to use that natural hot water to heat our buildings. Today over 100 buildings are kept cozy year-round, making Breitenbush the largest privately owned geothermal facility in the Pacific Northwest.
One of our building design principles is to use recycled/sustainable/renewable as much as we can. Much of our lumber comes from “volunteers,” trees that offer their wood to us by falling or being blown down in the Breitenbush forest. Some we mill into beams and boards, and some we use whole.
The History
Antiquity
The hot springs at Breitenbush were created by a combination of volcanism and glaciation thousands of years ago. Native Americans were the first humans to visit the springs. Although the Santiam band of the Kalapuya lived closest, numerous tribes in a radius of hundreds of miles visited the springs to hunt, fish, pick huckleberries, and use the springs for healing and ritual purification.
Early Developments
The first Europeans to visit the springs were Hudson Bay fur trappers out of Fort Vancouver, probably in the 1840s. In 1873 John Minto led an expedition up the North Santiam Canyon in search of a pass through the Cascades to eastern Oregon. Minto recorded in his journal: “We penetrated up the valley through about seventeen miles of narrow gorge … to where Breightenbush makes in from the north; found John Breightenbush, a one-armed hunter, and nothing else there ahead of us, and named the beautiful affluent for him.” And so the springs were named.
Judge John B. Waldo, Chief Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, visited the springs in the 1880s and wrote in his diary:
“I have read Thoreau’s Maine Woods through at this camp
and am going over some of it a second time. He reads well
far off in this boughy and aromatic forest of the Cascade
Mountains where the foot of the lumberer he detested has
never trod.”
In fact, Judge Waldo was so moved by his visits to the springs and environs that he wrote to President Grover Cleveland: “There are educational uses in mountains and the wilderness which might well justify a wise people in preserving and reserving them for such uses… where, in communion with untrammeled nature and the free air, the narrowing tendencies of an artificial and petty existence might be perceived and corrected, and the spirit enlarged and strengthened.” The result of their correspondence was the creation of the Cascade Forest Reserve, from which came all of the national forests of the Oregon Cascades.
The springs were homesteaded in 1904. President Theodore Roosevelt granted the homestead patent to one Claude Mansfield, over vociferous objections from the then incipient U.S. Forest Service. In 1927, Merle Bruckman purchased Breitenbush. Bruckman’s father had made a fortune by inventing the first machine to mass produce ice cream cones, allowing Merle to purchase the land and build the lodge and other buildings, thus realizing his dream of operating a wilderness health spa. Merle operated Breitenbush for 20 years, then retired and sold the property in the mid-1950s. The property changed hands a number of times until 1972, when after two devastating floods the business was closed, strung with barbed wire and posted with armed guards. An era had come to an end.
Rebirth
In 1977, Alex Beamer bought the land after looking at old spas throughout the Cascades. Breitenbush was his choice to begin the building of an intentional community to operate a retreat and conference center at the hot springs. Several years were spent restoring the old resort and getting it ready to host guest again. People who wished to put their energies into this project were invited to come and join in restoring the facilities. In 1981 the Breitenbush community started hosting guests who participated in a variety of workshops, celebrations or personal retreats.
The Detroit Ranger District of the Willamette National Forest became the largest timber cutting district in the 48 states at precisely the time Alex and friends began the Breitenbush experiment. All 10 historic trails were abandoned or paved over. The sounds and sights of industrial forestry chainsaws and ever growing scars on the hillsides impacted heavily the nascent community.
Resistance
Starting in 1979, the new residents of Breitenbush began questioning Forest Service plans for the area. By 1981, Dinah Ross had filed many timber sale appeals and recruited dozens to help her campaign for an end to logging and protection of the forests around the springs.
In 1984, the entire area of Devil’s Ridge was added to the Wilderness System by a vote of the U.S. House of Representatives, thanks to the tireless work of Dinah and friends. However, when the legislation reached the Senate, the area was removed from the protected list.
In 1985 the community purchased the land from Alex Beamer. Subsequently in 1989, a worker-owned cooperative corporation was formed through which the workers now own the business.
In 1986, the Reconstituted Man Timber Sale went forward in Mansfield Creek , the scars remain today in view of the Meadow Pools. Later that year, logging began on the North Roaring Devil Timber Sale, which saw cutting for the first time across the South Breitenbush River in the majestic forest at the base of Devil’s Ridge. The Community literally drew a line in the road and supported the blockade of the Cathedral Forest Action Group.
The Breitenbush Community and the Oregon Natural Resources Council (ONRC) filed suit. Before we won the precedent-setting Cumulative Effects lawsuit, the only bridge over the South Breitenbush was built, 1.2 miles of road was constructed, and 63 acres of ancient trees (some more than 700 years old) were clearcut.
Focus on the Positive
Community members and friends slowly reclaimed the trail network. Now, more than 20 miles of trail radiating out from the springs are available. It’s estimated that over 12,000 people hike the reclaimed trails each year, with the Breitenbush Gorge Trail and the Spotted Owl Trail featured in various hiking guides.
With the advent of the Clinton Forest Plan in 1993, most of the area above Cleator Bend is part of a 49,000 acre Late Successional Reserve (LSR). While the LSR doesn’t have the protection level of wilderness, no plans for future logging within it are on the table. As it had been for thousands of years, and continuing now with over 35+ years of the Breitenbush Community, our Mother Earth is the constant, tirelessly pouring forth her healing waters for all species to enjoy.