The story
Antelope is a tiny ranching and stage town on the high desert of north-central Oregon, with a post office dating to 1871. It was never large — under 60 people by 1980 — and would be an obscure near-ghost like a dozen others in the region if not for what happened next.
In 1981 the followers of guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh bought a nearby ranch and built the commune of Rajneeshpuram. When they clashed with the local government, sannyasins moved into Antelope in numbers, and on September 18, 1984 they outvoted the old residents 57 to 22 and renamed the town Rajneesh. The wider commune collapsed in 1985 amid criminal charges — including the largest bioterror attack in U.S. history, a salmonella poisoning in The Dalles — and the town's name reverted to Antelope. The Netflix series Wild Wild Country later made the episode famous again.
Today Antelope has around 40 residents and remains a real, if barely populated, incorporated town. It is not an abandoned ruin; people mostly find it because of the Rajneesh story, and a small plaque in town marks the takeover it survived.
What remains today
A small occupied town — church, school, old store buildings, and a commemorative plaque marking the 1984 Rajneesh takeover. A living near-ghost, not a ruin.
Questions from the field
- Was Antelope, Oregon really renamed Rajneesh?
- Yes. In September 1984, followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh who had moved into the town outvoted the longtime residents and renamed it Rajneesh. It reverted to Antelope in 1985 after the commune collapsed.
- Is Antelope, Oregon abandoned?
- No — it is a very small but still incorporated and inhabited town of about 40 people. It draws visitors mainly because of the Rajneeshpuram history covered in Wild Wild Country.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Antelope — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
File a field report
Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
Add photographs
Credited, dated, and preserved as part of Antelope's permanent record.
No field reports yet — sign in to file the first.
Primary sources for this record
- — USGS GNIS feature 1116966
- — The Oregon Encyclopedia — Rajneeshees
- — Oregon Historical Society — Rajneeshpuram records