May 2026, Quarterly Meeting Johnson County Historical Society

The Johnson County Historical Society will host Dr. Thomas Kersen at its quarterly meeting on May 7, 2026, for a program on his research and writing about the back-to-the-land movement and communal life in the Ozark Mountains, including the Johnson County area above Oark.

Dr. Kersen became a resident of Johnson County in 1979 when his family and a small group of like-minded individuals left El Paso, Texas, for Arkansas to form a commune in the rugged hills of the Ozark Mountains.

Thomas documents the struggles the young commune endured as well as life in the area above Oark. Other groups were likewise being drawn to the Ozarks in search of a new way of living with the land. Some well-known families are chronicled in his book, “Where Misfits Fit,” which won the Stanford M. Lyman Distinguished Book Award in 2021. Dr. Kersen is the interim department chair for Criminal…