Earlier this month I visited Three Rivers, California to investigate a possible dissertation research site: "Advance," the tent camp of the Kaweah Cooperative Commonwealth. This is what it looked like in about 1889:

and this is what it looks like today:

These people were really interesting characters. Inspired by a couple of well-known San Francisco labour agitators, about 100 people moved up into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains between 1886 and 1891 to live in an experimental socialist colony. They printed their own money - which actually wasn't money at all, which was the point. Each bill was worth a certain number of minutes of labour, which could be redeemed at the colony store for... for... not really much of anything, as they usually couldn't afford to stock it. The colony's economic plan was to exploit timber resources in the Giant Forest, which of course led to much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments and law suits when the US federal government established Sequoia National Park there in 1890.