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The Beginning
The Rainbow Family was created at a gathering at Milo McIver State Park in Estacada, Oregon from August 28 to September 3, 1970. -
First Meeting
The first official Rainbow Family Gathering was held at the Strawberry Lake, Colorado, on the Continental Divide, in 1972. -
First Murders
two women were murdered at a Rainbow Gathering in Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia in 1980 after there had been lots of tension with the Rainbow Family and the locals. -
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First International Gatherings
The first European Rainbow gathering took place in 1983. In 1992, American immigrants organized the first Rainbow gathering in Israel, which was extended to six weeks. -
Poopgate
An outbreak of shigellosis (bloody diarrhoea) occurred at the 1987 gathering in Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest in Graham County, North Carolina. Hundreds of people got sick. Lots of sheriffs were assigned to check in with the people and there were lots of crimes being committed such as, child neglect and alcohol violations. -
Murders bought back up
Jacob Beard were responsible. Beard was convicted in 1999, but exonerated on appeal in 2000 and received a $2 million settlement for wrongful conviction. White supremacist Joseph Paul Franklin confessed to the murders but later revealed he had just read about them. -
Government Steps In
Although arrests and police run-ins have always been a hallmark of the Gathering, in the past these issues were dominated by an ongoing conflict with the government. For more than three decades, state and federal officials tried to shut down the Rainbow Gatherings, or at least force the "Rainbows" to sign a group-use permit with the National Forest Service, "permit envy" of the Bureau of Land Management, which exacts hefty fees from Burning Man. And in 2008 it was the boiling point for the Gov. -
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Stabbings and Another Murder
There were three non-fatal stabbings at a gathering in Colorado in 2014. The same year, a woman was found dead at a Rainbow Gathering in Utah. In early 2015, there was a fatal shooting at a gathering in Florida. -
Recent Murder
In February of 2021, a man assisting at a Rainbow Gathering in the Ocala National Forest in Florida was murdered at gunpoint from approximately two feet away, according to eyewitnesses Larry (Frank) DeWayne Dugger, 41, was taken to a local hospital, where he died.