- In the first days of the first year of the twentieth century, three men, all socialists, formed the Free Land Association, and one year later, on the southern shore of Holmes Harbor on Whidbey Island, the utopian community of Freeland came into being. Hoping to avoid the doctrinal disputes and human failings that had doomed other such experiments, the association’s plan for Freeland was to value cooperative living over political dogma. Other settlers in the area were self-described “capitalists,” believers in free enterprise who wanted nothing to do with socialism. Despite considerable tension and deep distrust, this mismatched group of tough, industrious, determined men and women managed to coexist, if not in harmony, at least without violence…
