Mel Lyman and the "Hill People" / by Jason Turgeon

You may have heard that there is - or was - a commune on the top of Fort Hill next to the park.  Whether or not the group of people who live in the complex at 60 Beech Glen St still meets that description is hard to say, but they definitely did at one point.  Information about them is a bit hard to find and they are very private, although they do run the Fort Hill construction company, now headquartered in Los Angeles.

The commune was led by a charismatic singer named Mel Lyman.  There’s an entire website dedicated to trying to unravel the mystery that surrounded him.  Many of the links on that site are reprints of old articles from the 1960s and 70s about the “Hill People” who started the commune.  It’s a fascinating, if poorly organized, read about the way life was on Fort Hill in the age of Aquarius.