The Last Resort, a Lagunitas property featuring dozens of hand-built, Asiatic, ecologically minded and illegal structures, clinched a state committee’s nomination to the National Register of Historic Places on Feb. 2. Last Friday, California’s Historical Resources Commission, which is overseen by the National Park Service, voted unanimously to approve the nomination.
Owner David Lee Hoffman, a tea merchant—and a scofflaw in the eyes of Marin County—applauded the recognition of his life’s work. “I slept much better than I’ve slept in a long time,” he told the Light. “I still have a warm glow. It’s very nice to see some recognition of my work for the last 50 years. I think all seven commissioners understood that there was something of value here.”
The decision defied pleas by county officials, who last month sent a letter to the commission urging it not to vote in favor of the Last Resort. The letter, signed by Community Development Agency Director Sarah Jones, detailed the county’s longstanding litigation with Mr. Hoffman over code violations ranging from unauthorized construction to sewage disposal issues, diversion of watercourses and illegal water draw. The letter provided a history of legal actions, court orders and reports that date back to 1988 and argue substantial endangerment to health and safety.
One thing Mr. Hoffman and the county can agree upon is that the nomination to the national register will have little impact on his ongoing legal battle. Two weeks ago, at a receivership conference, Marin County Superior Court Judge Andrew Sweet extended Mr. Hoffman’s eviction deadline to June 1.
A self-taught architect and engineer, Mr. Hoffman started building the structures on his hillside property in 1974 after traveling throughout Asia for several years. According to the county, he built most, if not all, of the structures without permits.
To many, the Last Resort is an experiment in sustainable and fantastical architecture, a flagship of Marin counterculture and a two-acre-sized middle finger to bureaucracy. But to county officials, Mr. Hoffman is a splitting migraine, openly acknowledging the unlawfulness of his experiments and refusing to comply with orders to remediate violations and vacate the property.
In 2015, after Mr. Hoffman ignored an order to remove his unpermitted structures, the court appointed a receiver who determined the property was substandard and a violation of state housing laws.
The next year, the Marin County Architectural Commission deemed the structures architecturally significant. The designation meant little in the legal battle, and on May 21, 2021, the court ordered Mr. Hoffman to vacate the property and the receiver to assess, value, list and market it. Mr. Hoffman said he paid roughly $30,000 for the two acres in the early ’70s, but now the Last Resort is subject to about $1 million in liens and defaulted taxes. The county has said that rehabilitating it would require at least half a million more.
The date of eviction has been continually delayed by Mr. Hoffman’s refusal to vacate, county counsel Brian Washington said.
“In 2022, he had been ordered to leave the property and we were working with him to get him to leave without court intervention, but he has declined to do so,” Mr. Washington said. “The judge has indicated that if he’s not going to move by the date in June, he’ll be found in contempt of the court.”
At that point, Mr. Washington said, Mr. Hoffman could be forcibly removed from the property.
“It’s very sad that they just come looking for violations,” Mr. Hoffman told the Light. “I didn’t have a permit, yes, but it’s not the end of the world. I’m absolutely astonished that the county has never paid attention to the methods of construction. We’ve had engineers come out and look at stuff and they don’t see a problem with it. We live in very uncertain times, and I hope that something will remain here after I’m gone.”
In a report included in the application to the national register—which was submitted by John Torrey, a neighbor and friend to Mr. Hoffman—architectural historian Daniel Paul argued that the property should be nominated based on three criteria. Firstly, that it is associated with events that have made a significant contribution to broad historical patterns; secondly, that it embodies distinctive characteristics of a particular type, period or construction method, or represents the work of a master; and finally, that it is an exceptionally important property less than 50 years old. Properties eligible for listing in the national register are normally at least 50 years old.
Mr. Paul described Mr. Hoffman’s work as a nod to the back-to-the-land movement pioneered by generations of Marinites in works ranging from Druid Heights to the Whole Earth Catalog. He called the Last Resort a beacon of the first-wave ecological architecture championed by Buckminster Fuller and Sim Van der Ryn, pointing to its rainwater catchment systems, solar-powered buildings, climate-cooling tea caves, vermiculture chambers and composting toilets.
Over half of the property’s 60 buildings, structures, sites and objects are historically significant, according to Mr. Paul’s report. Among those structures are the worm composting toilets—dubbed Le Petit Pissoir, Le Grande Pissoir, Brick Shithouse and the Worm Palace—that fertilize waste and help to grow Mr. Hoffman’s food. Mr. Paul pointed out that the worms in Mr. Hoffman’s compost systems were descendants of those he gathered from a backyard in Woodacre 50 years ago, joining the property’s ecological innovation with its historic value.
There’s also the Boat Pond—a 10-foot-deep, hand-dug pond that doubles as a rainwater catchment basin—and the three-story, solar-powered Shower Tower. The roofs of some buildings act as balconies for others, redwood trees serve as walls, rebar is corrugated into stone, narrow decks peer out across the San Geronimo Valley and tea huts pepper the property.
Mr. Hoffman built the structures from recycled and reused materials, including granite from China’s Fujian Province, cobblestones from San Francisco streets, rejected bricks from San Rafael’s McNear Brick & Block and slate shingles from the Los Angeles estate of Don Henley of The Eagles.
“There’s not a single piece of plywood on this property,” Mr. Hoffman said.
Mr. Hoffman’s composting techniques have landed him in museums and science expos across the country, and his distribution of Chinese teas has made him a favorite in the specialty tea industry. Enshrined on the side of his main teahouse in Chinese characters reads the Last Resort’s motto: Water is precious, soil is sacred, shit is a resource.
“That’s been my guiding philosophy for the last 50 years,” said Mr. Hoffman, who tries to not let his legal troubles and eviction notices concern him. His fight, he added, is on behalf of the planet and sustainability. “My frustration is there’s no conversation in the government for alternatives, even though we see septic tanks are leaking everywhere. Septic tanks are so archaic and obsolete—I mean look at the Woodacre Flats. I think it’s good to explore alternatives that are safe and nonpolluting,” he said.
Idiosyncratic, irreplaceable, pioneering and historic were a few of the words used by more than 40 supporters—including neighbors, friends, writers, professors and architectural historians—who voiced their support for the nomination over Zoom earlier this month.
“All you have to do is take a group of school children and you’ll realize what happens inside of a little mind when they see this incredible place,” Forest Knolls artist Richard Lang said.
The board’s seven commissioners expressed admiration for the project, emphasizing its allure and unusual number of stalwart supporters. One commissioner, Lee Adams III, was less enthused, and cast an apprehensive vote.
“I appreciate the creativity and uniqueness of this property,” he said. “I am frustrated, however. If we all did this with our property, I’m not sure where the world would be, and I’m trusting that our designation is not being used as a weapon.”
Other commissioners applauded Mr. Hoffman’s efforts as a self-made builder.
“David Hoffman is an architect, perhaps not a licensed one, but he is one,” commissioner and prehistoric archeologist René Vellanoweth said. “I completely support this, and the permitting stuff—that’s just not our purview, and I’m so glad for that. This is a piece of art that should be preserved, should be shared and, perhaps, in some ways, used as a model for how we need to live sustainably in the future.”
Joy Beasley, the keeper of the national register in Washington, D.C., will have roughly 30 days to decide whether the Last Resort is a national landmark.
If awarded the designation, the property will be one of 16 places on the registry in West Marin, including Samuel Penfield Taylor’s paper mill, a lime kiln in Olema built by Russian stonemasons, the seashore’s dairy ranches districts and the Bolinas wharf.
Mr. Hoffman, who will turn 80 in August, is taking it one day at a time. Despite struggling with Lyme disease, he holds weekly tea gatherings at his shop in Lagunitas that draw people from across the Bay Area.
“Any day, the sheriff could come up and say, ‘You have to leave,’” he said. “I have a lot of stuff here, and I guess if I had no alternative but to leave, I’d like to leave with just a shoulder bag. My health is deteriorating and sometimes walking up the driveway is a challenge, and I can’t just start over again with all this stuff. I don’t know where I would go, I don’t know where I would eat. I have been eating out of my garden for 50 years.”