Bohemian Grove Explained: What Happens at the All-Male Retreat

The Bohemian Grove is the summer encampment of the Bohemian Club of San Francisco, an all-male private club founded in 1872. Every July, for roughly two weeks, some of the most powerful men in American public life gather at a 2,700-acre redwood grove on the Russian River in Monte Rio, California, for a private retreat known as “the encampment.” The encampment has been a subject of sustained public attention since the 1970s. For the broader fraternal pattern, see the fraternal orders and lodges pillar; for the relationship to the American power structure, see secret societies and government; and for the broader pattern of conspiracy theorizing about American elites, see the deep state and secret societies.

The Bohemian Club of San Francisco

Founding and Early History

The Bohemian Club was founded in 1872 in San Francisco as a convivial journalists’ and artists’ club. The early membership was drawn from the San Francisco press, theater, and literary scene, and the club’s name reflected the European bohemian tradition. By the late 1870s, the club had outgrown its original premises and was looking for a rural retreat.

The Move to Monte Rio

In 1878 the club purchased a 2,700-acre site in the redwood forest along the Russian River at Monte Rio, California, and the first “encampment” was held that summer. The Bohemian Grove, as the camp was christened, became the social center of the San Francisco business and political elite. The club’s city headquarters at 624 Taylor Street in San Francisco remains an important venue for club events during the rest of the year.

Membership

The Bohemian Club has roughly 2,700 members at any time, drawn from a wide range of American elites. Members include former presidents, members of Congress, cabinet members, senior federal judges, corporate chief executives, media executives, senior law-firm partners, university presidents, and senior military officers. The club is constitutionally all-male. Membership is by invitation only, and a lengthy waiting list is typical.

Notable members have included Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Henry Kissinger, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush, along with a long list of senior figures from the Reagan and first Bush administrations. The membership includes a substantial fraction of the leadership of the Hoover Institution, the Heritage Foundation, the Council on Foreign Relations, and other prominent American policy institutions.

The Encampment

The Bohemian Grove encampment begins in mid-July and runs for about two weeks. The encampment combines business sessions, theatrical performances, lectures, and informal social life. Members stay in “camps”—small wooden structures in the redwood forest, each owned by a subgroup of members. The camps are typically decorated with elaborate carvings, paintings, and displays, and the encampment is a working retreat rather than a holiday in the conventional sense. The atmosphere has been described as a combination of a summer camp, a gentleman’s club, and an artists’ colony.

The encampment program includes a daily schedule of events, a list of speakers, and theatrical performances by the “Bohemians,” the club’s in-house troupe. The Lakeside Talks—informal addresses by a senior figure—have included some of the most important American political speeches of the late twentieth century, including Richard Nixon’s 1967 address on the Vietnam War. The “Mole” speech tradition, in which a designated member delivers an irreverent, frequently profane satirical address, is one of the most discussed features of the encampment.

The Cremation of Care

The encampment opens with the “Cremation of Care,” a mock ceremony at the base of a 40-foot-tall concrete owl statue near the Grove’s lake. The ceremony is performed in full evening dress by members of the club’s theatrical troupe, with a high priest, an altar, a choir, and a coffin containing an effigy called “Care” or “Dull Care.” The ceremony is a half-serious, half-satirical performance in which the assembled members are asked to put away their worldly cares before the encampment begins. A leaked video of the 1985 Cremation of Care was widely distributed on the early internet.

The Cremation of Care is not, in any serious sense, a religious or occult ceremony. It is a theatrical performance, written and produced by the club’s theatrical troupe. The owl statue is the symbol of the Bohemian Club, and the iconography of the ceremony draws on a general esoteric and chivalric vocabulary rather than on any specific religious tradition. The interpretation of the ceremony as occult or satanic, common in conspiracy theorizing, is not supported by the documentary record.

The Lake of the Bottomless

A second major feature of the encampment is the “Lake of the Bottomless,” a small artificial lake in the center of the Grove, fed by an underground spring. The lake is the principal symbol of the encampment’s sacred geography, and the Lakeside Talks take place on a floating platform on the lake, with the principal addresses delivered to the assembled members from this location.

The Mole

The “Mole” is a tradition in which a single member, designated as the Mole, delivers an irreverent, profane, and frequently obscene satirical address to the assembled membership. The Mole is anonymous, and is typically a senior member of the club. The tradition is a piece of controlled transgression: the Mole is allowed to say things that would be inappropriate in any other context.

Membership Rosters and Leaks

The Bohemian Club’s membership has been the subject of intense media attention. The first widely circulated membership list was published by the journalist Philip Weiss in 1989. Subsequent lists have been published in major American newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. The most extensive public discussion of the membership is the documentary film In the Shadow of the Owl (1989) and the 2004 book Inside the Bohemian Grove by G. William Domhoff, who has compiled the most thorough public account of the membership and the encampment’s proceedings. A more recent series of leaks, beginning in 2011 with the Anonymous hacktivist group, has produced a more detailed list of the membership. The leaks have confirmed the broad outlines of the public account: the membership is drawn from the senior reaches of American business, government, finance, and the media, and the encampment is a private social retreat that combines informal networking with theatrical and ceremonial traditions. The broader pattern is discussed in conspiracy theories and hidden power.

First Amendment and Privacy

The Bohemian Club has consistently defended its privacy on First Amendment grounds. The club is a private association, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the First Amendment protects the right of expressive association, including the right of private groups to exclude outsiders and to maintain confidentiality. The club has not been required to disclose its membership or its proceedings. Critics argue that the meeting of senior American officials at a private club raises legitimate questions about transparency; defenders respond that the encampment is a recreational retreat and that the privacy of the proceedings is essential to the free discussion that the encampment makes possible.

The Pattern of the Bohemian Club

The Bohemian Club is a modern example of the Western fraternal-and-private-club tradition. The club’s combination of an all-male membership, a closed meeting space, a body of ritual, a network of internal “camps,” and a tightly bounded public identity is a familiar pattern in the fraternal orders and lodges tradition. The club’s political and economic influence is a feature of the broader pattern of secret societies and government, and the broader context of conspiracy theories and hidden power provides additional perspective. The First Amendment defense of expressive association has consistently upheld the club’s privacy.

Sources and Further Reading

The standard scholarly treatment is G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America? The Triumph of the Corporate Rich (multiple editions, most recent 7th ed. 2013), and his monograph Inside the Bohemian Grove: Photos and Legends of the Encampment of the Bohemian Club (2005). For the encampment’s history, the relevant older work is the journalistic account by Philip Weiss, “The Big Daddy” in New York Times Magazine (1989), the first major mainstream press piece on the Club. The Club’s own historical material is published in The Annals of the Bohemian Club (volumes 1–10, 1878–1927). The first amendment defense of the Club’s privacy is treated in the Supreme Court cases NAACP v. Alabama (1958) and Boy Scouts of America v. Dale (2000).

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