“Topanga Nudist Retreat Closing”
by Rita Stollman
Land For Sale
Topanga's controversial Sandstone Retreat shut its doors to
the public last week and put its secluded 15-acre hilltop estate up for sale.
The announcement by Sandstone founder John Williamson was
greeted with delight by some of Topanga's other residents, who long have
opposed the private club's encouragement of open sensuality and nudity.
“It's marvelous,” said Harriet Swenson, former president of
the Topanga Community Women's Club and leading opponent in the nearly
three-year battle to get Sandstone and two other “growth centers” out of
Topanga.
It was the long, financially taxing legal battles Sandstone
has fought since it first opened in early 1970 that forced its closure today,
Williamson said.
High Legal Costs
Even though the club won the right to assemble in the nude
in an April ruling by the California Court of Appeals, he said legal costs have
run in the neighborhood of $10,000.
The ruling, involving Sandstone and Topanga’s Elysium Fields
Growth Center, overturned as unconstitutional a Los Angeles County ordinance
regulating nudist camps.
In response to a subsequent protest by several angry Topanga
residents, the county Board of Supervisors created a special task force to
investigate how else to combat the sexually oriented centers in the canyon
community.
Mrs. Swenson said her main opposition to the centers
recently has been that they are “running businesses without licenses.”
Money-Maker
She said the centers advertise publicly in the underground
press and are money-making enterprises.
She said she is delighted about Sandstone's closing, adding
that the Topanga community always has hoped the growth centers there “would
just fold up their tents and fade away.”
“They certainly do not fit the character of the residential
community up here,” she said.
Topanga realtor and Chamber of Commerce director Bill
Prewitt also said he is glad Sandstone is closing down, but added that he finds
the secluded club at 21400 Saddle Peak Road “probably the least offensive’’ of
the three growth centers.
Meanwhile, Williamson said
he and his wife plan to tour the United States sometime in the next three
months and look for a place where they can expand the full-time residential community
Sandstone started in Topanga.
