Ken Kesey’s La Honda Legacy: A Journey to the Lair Before Traveling East

Wild panther lilies signal summer near the misty gray coast of San Mateo County. About eight miles inland from Highway 1 lies La Honda, the rustic community Ken Kesey called home from 1962 to 1967. Seeking creative solitude after leaving the bohemian enclave of Perry Lane in Menlo Park, Kesey found a landscape dotted with 1929 summer cabins and homes spread far apart, offering privacy. His arrival marked a unique chapter in this secluded town’s history, a place where my own attempt to retrace his steps required an unexpected detour; road closures meant I couldn’t simply Visit The Lair And Then Travel East as initially planned, forcing a coastal approach to this storied location.

Kesey in La Honda: An Outlier’s Arrival

Kesey, fresh from the success of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, wasn’t immediately embraced by the established La Honda community of ranchers and long-time residents. One local, a teenager during Kesey’s tenure, recalled the author farming pot – unusual for the time – and largely keeping to himself. “My sense was that he was an outlier,” he noted. “You had to live there a long time to be part of that community. I never heard of any parties with him that included established residents.” Instead, Kesey hosted gatherings for his Perry Lane crowd, becoming a spectacle for local teens at the town cafe due to his distinct counter-culture presence.

Echoes of Oregon in the California Hills

During his time in La Honda, Kesey worked on Sometimes a Great Notion, a novel exploring a fiercely independent family’s struggles in a small Oregon logging town amidst a union strike. Traces of the book’s themes resonate with the drive into La Honda, a journey through landscapes that evoke a sense of traveling back through time. As Kesey wrote, “And watching, seeing half-remembered farmhouses and landmarks stroking past, I couldn’t quite shake the sensation that the road I traveled moved not so much through miles and mountains, as back, through time.” My own drive was complicated; winter mudslides had closed Highway 84, the direct route east through the mountains. To reach Kesey’s former home, I had to take Highway 92 to the coast and approach La Honda from the south along the ocean.

The “Viking Lodge” by the Creek

Kesey’s former home sits back from the curves of La Honda Road, accessible via a wooden bridge crossing a creek. It’s a long cabin of pine and fir with distinctive red trim. Kesey dubbed it a “Viking lodge,” its architecture perhaps loosely inspired by New England saltbox houses. After suffering extensive flood damage from El Niño in 1998, the house was restored and raised out of the floodplain. It stands about a mile from “town”—a collection of businesses including a country store, post office, and the famed dive bar Applejack’s, still frequented by loggers and ranchers.

Original weathered wood panels from Ken Kesey's La Honda house entryway, hinting at its past.

Preserving a Counter-Culture Icon: Adams and Knodt

The house is now owned by Terry Adams and Eva Knodt, a retired couple dedicated to preserving Kesey’s legacy. Adams, a soft-spoken former Air Force officer and writer, initially encountered Kesey’s work in grad school. His views on psychedelics evolved over time, particularly after moving to Palo Alto and meeting psychologist Vik Lovell. Lovell famously introduced Kesey to CIA experiments with LSD and mushrooms at the Menlo Park VA hospital. Kesey dedicated One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest to Lovell, crediting him: he “told me dragons did not exist, then led me to their lairs.” This connection to “lairs” adds another layer to the journey to Kesey’s secluded home. Adams connected with Lovell through psychodrama and men’s groups that explored psychedelics ritualistically.

Close-up of a pantry door in Ken Kesey's former La Honda home, covered in a vintage collage from his Prankster era.

In 1995, Adams spotted a flyer advertising Kesey’s dilapidated cabin. He showed it to Lovell at St. Michael’s Alley, a Palo Alto bohemian hub, who confirmed it was his friend Kesey’s property. Despite the house being “terrifically run-down,” the realtor initially dismissed Adams and Knodt due to their modest means. Adams wrote Kesey a heartfelt letter outlining his intentions for the house’s legacy. While Kesey didn’t reply directly, Lovell vouched for Adams, smoothing the path for the purchase. Adams shared biographical threads with Kesey, including a conservative upbringing, an interest in psychedelics, and literary ambitions, later publishing his own poetry collection, Adam’s Ribs.

Ghosts of the Pranksters and the Past

When the sale closed in July 1997, Kesey, his wife, and friends visited to reminisce. Kesey pointed out significant spots, including a small, intimate fairy circle of redwoods where the Merry Pranksters held “heart-to-heart talks”—a space perhaps crowded if Kesey’s friends, the Hells Angels, were present. The surrounding woods were the site of a notorious police stakeout targeting the Pranksters’ drug activities. After a pot bust in 1965, Kesey remarked, “I have the impression now and then that the community would like to be rid of us.” He faked his suicide in 1966 and fled to Mexico to evade charges, eventually serving time before returning to Oregon. The house fell into disuse, occupied by squatters and acquaintances. By the time Adams and Knodt arrived, the accumulated detritus formed an “archaeological dig.”

Current owner Terry Adams stands beside a converted school bus RV marked 'ART' on the former Ken Kesey property in La Honda.

Restoration and Lingering Mystique

The careful restoration by Adams and Knodt after the 1998 floods preserved the house’s original floor plan while elevating it for safety. The home retains tangible links to Kesey’s time: pencil marks on a doorjamb track the heights of family members, including his son Zane in 1964 and again in 2014. Surfaces painted by Kesey and the Pranksters remain, including the toilet Kesey was painting during his arrest. A small piano glows with Day-Glo paint, and a kitchen door still bears collages from the era. This preservation contributes to the property’s enduring mystique, a tangible connection to a past both forward-thinking (psychedelic exploration) and backward (racial depictions by modern standards).

Wide view of Ken Kesey's restored former house in La Honda, California, elevated above the floodplain amidst trees.

The Writer’s Shack and the Power of Place

Where Kesey’s iconic bus, Furthur, once sat, Adams and Knodt now keep their own converted school bus RV, labeled “ART.” Beyond it lie the woods and the clearing where Kesey’s writing shack once stood, overlooking the glassy creek where salmon run. Standing there, the creek reflects the redwoods and sunlight, a stark contrast to the turbulent Oregon creek in Sometimes a Great Notion. One can imagine Kesey finding grounding amidst the “mystical ferns and redwoods,” channeling the overwhelming feelings induced by psychedelics into the manageable structure of words. This “sorcerous place” likely fueled the powerful depiction of small-town life in his Oregon novel. It contrasts sharply with One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, written on Perry Lane while Kesey worked at the VA hospital, drawing inspiration—and irritation from Wallace Stegner—from his surroundings, including, according to a local whose mother worked there, modeling Nurse Ratched on a real coworker.

La Honda Today: Legacy, Literature, and Lingering Tensions

Decades after Kesey struggled to entice writer friends to visit his remote home, Adams cofounded La Honda Lit Night with local novelist Joe Cottonwood. This continues a local tradition of storytelling, Adams explains, involving residents with lively imaginations who value being heard within their community, regardless of publication aspirations. Yet, even in this bucolic setting, the modern world intrudes. Conversations turn to ChatGPT, likened by Knodt to a calculator for creativity. Silicon Valley’s influence is inescapable. Furthermore, La Honda’s seclusion is double-edged; severe environmental conditions like fires and mudslides necessitate state intervention, sometimes perceived as inadequate by locals who rely on their own resilience, as when Cal Fire was stretched thin and residents defied evacuation orders to hold a fire line.

Writing the Hidden Place

There’s an inherent risk in writing about cherished, hidden places. The act reveals, potentially exposing the location to interpretations that might spoil its essence. As Charles Jones wrote in A Separate Place, outsiders drawn by La Honda’s reputation for wildness sometimes brought destructive “city violence,” misunderstanding the peace available there. Kesey himself might have been seen as such a force initially. Yet, his legend endures, drawing curiosity and shaping La Honda’s identity from an old-time logger town into a haven for nonconformists. Kesey largely avoided setting his novels directly in La Honda, perhaps consciously preserving its separateness, even as elements of Menlo Park seeped into Cuckoo’s Nest.

Conclusion: The Enduring Resonance of Kesey’s Lair

Visiting Ken Kesey’s former La Honda home offers a unique journey into the heart of a counter-culture legend’s creative sanctuary. My own trip, rerouted from the intended path east, became a pilgrimage to the “lair” referenced in Kesey’s dedication—a place of intense privacy, artistic foment, and complex community relations. Guided by the thoughtful stewardship of Terry Adams and Eva Knodt, the house stands not just as a restored structure, but as a living repository of stories—of the Pranksters, the writing process, the clashes with conformity, and the enduring spirit of a place grappling with its past and future. Kesey’s legacy, intertwined with the rugged landscape and independent spirit of La Honda, continues to resonate, attracting those drawn to the fundamental stories of freedom and nonconformity he embodied.